Russia’s VTB Capital suspended from London Stock Exchange
A subsidiary of Russia’s second largest bank, VTB, has been suspended from trading on the London Stock Exchange after the UK’s imposition of sanctions over Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The London Stock Exchange Group said on Friday it had suspended VTB Capital’s membership with immediate effect, meaning it can no longer trade in the British capital.
The move comes after Boris Johnson announced what he called the “largest ever” range of sanctions against Russian firms and individuals, freezing the assets of all the main Russian banks, including VTB.
VTB, which is majority owned by the state and has interests in banking assets across eastern Europe, has assets totalling £154bn. Legislation is expected to be tabled next week to ban major Russian companies from raising finance on UK markets and to prevent Moscow from raising sovereign debt in London.
“Sanctions are a reality for us over the last few years and another round of politically motivated anti-Russian sanctions did not come as a surprise,” VTB said in a statement.
There are a number of VTB executives, and those with links to the bank, who feature in the government’s list of individuals against whom it has levelled sanctions.
These include VTB’s president-chair, Andrey Kostin, who is also a member of the supreme council of the United Russia political party, as well as high-ranking executives Andrey Puchkov and Yuri Alekseyevich Soloviev.
Denis Bortnikov, the deputy chair of VTB Bank’s management board, is also on the sanctions list. He is a deputy president of VTB Bank and chair of its management board. As well as this, he is the son ofAleksandr Bortnikov, a director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), who has been on the sanctions list since March 2021.
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