Putin Starving Companies of Cash They Can’t Obtain Abroad

Russia is limiting corporate access to domestic financing even as the escalating Ukraine crisis increasingly isolates companies from overseas sources of cash.

The government’s about-face on its pledge to end a freeze on pension money being used by private money managers risks raising corporate borrowing costs as it deepens the country’s economic slowdown. Some of Russia’s biggest issuers are already locked out of international capital markets as punishment for what U.S. and European leaders say is President Vladimir Putin’s support of separatists in eastern Ukraine.