Putin OKs Citi’s sale of Russian banks to Mikhail Prokhorov

Putin OKs Citi’s sale of Russian banks to Mikhail Prokhorov

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has rubber-stamped the sale of Citi’s Russian banking operations to Renaissance Capital, an funding agency that belongs to billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, the former proprietor of the Brooklyn Nets.

The presidential order was printed on the Kremlin’s web site on Wednesday, confirming a key step in the Jane Fraser-led lender’s deliberate exit from Russia, three years after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine that has killed tens of hundreds of people.

Renaissance Capital is a component of Prokhorov’s Onexim conglomerate.

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin signed a decree that successfully rubber-stamped the sale of Citi’s Russia operations. through REUTERS

The 60-year-old, who bought the NBA outfit to Joseph Tsai for $2.3 billion in 2019 amid reported stress from Putin, fled to Israel two months after Russia invaded its smaller neighbor.

The sale to Renaissance, which had been sophisticated by wider Western sanctions and asset freezes on Russian entities, still requires approval from US regulators.

It follows related exits by Wall Street big Goldman Sachs, Germany’s Deutsche Bank, and French monetary agency Société Générale.

A Citi spokeswoman told The Post: “The transaction is subject to additional approvals and we won’t be commenting further at this stage.”

News of the diktat, which offered no particulars of the worth or timeline of the transaction, was first reported by Bloomberg.

The transfer comes weeks after Citi’s board of administrators voted to make Scotland-born Fraser the financial institution’s board chair while awarding her a $25 million bonus of restricted inventory.

Renaissance Capital is a component of Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim empire. He was the first non-American to personal an NBA franchise, snapping up the then-New Jersey Nets in 2009. Euroleague Basketball through Getty Images

Citi first announced plans to promote its Russian shopper enterprise in 2021 as half of Fraser’s global restructuring plan.

But in August 2022, it went additional and announced that it could wind down all of its shopper and business banking operations in Russia over the conflict, which Moscow merely refers to as a “special military operation.”

The financial institution had roughly $11.7 billion in shoppers’ publicity to Russia as of the end of September, the majority of which have been company dividends that the Russian authorities wouldn’t enable Citi to remit.

Citi has been current in the Russian retail banking market since the early 2000s. But the lender has accelerated its exit plans since Russia invaded Ukraine. Bloomberg through Getty Images

Fraser is planning to offload some 14 banking models worldwide, and Citi is anticipated to finalize the sale of its subsidiary in Poland while shuttering its actions in Korea and China as half of its drive to slash prices.

Citi is also trying to promote its Mexico shopper banking unit, generally known as Banamex, by an IPO.

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