Finance
Raiffeisen Forced to Abandon Russian Plan After Regulators Balk
- Strategy was intended to repatriate €1.5 billion in profits
- Regulators had warned of consequences of violating sanctions
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Raiffeisen Bank International AG suffered its second major setback related to its Russian business in less than a month after EU and US regulators forced it to cancel a complex deal that would have enabled it to move profits out of the country.
The bank said it hadn’t been able to get regulators to back the plan, putting it at risk of violating sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Last month, the European Central Bank told the lender that it needed to accelerate the wind-down of the unit, which accounted for about half of its pre-tax profits last year.