Russia

The Trump administration’s decision not to announce new sanctions against Russia on Monday is unlikely to be the end of the sanctions saga, with designations having been proven to be the US's most effective weapon against Russia.

The US Treasury’s targeting of Rusal in its latest round of sanctions was far from the random hit that investors are claiming. The US has demonstrated its power over the dollar-based financial system — and it has no need to do further damage.

Some EM fund managers and fixed income analysts are already in discussions over whether investors stuck holding Rusal bonds may be able, with the issuer’s help, to create a workaround that would allow the company to stay current on its debt obligations.

The IPO of IBS IT, a Russian technology company, was postponed on Friday due to “increased market volatility” driven primarily by US-led sanctions against Russia. According to Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the UN, more might be coming.

China plans to turn Hainan into its latest trade laboratory, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warns countries joining the Belt and Road Initiative against accumulating excessive debt, and the securities watchdog says it will allow international participants to trade onshore iron ore futures by early May.

With little clarity on the full scope of the new round of sanctions on Russia from the US Office of Foreign Assets Control’s (OFAC), service providers have been quick to cut ties with the seven sanctioned oligarchs and their related entities for risk of violating new rules on facilitating business with designated individuals or entities.

In the past, some investors were able to draw a line dividing the Russian businesses in which they parked their cash from Vladimir Putin’s government, despite what some have called a “feudal” hierarchy in the country. Last week’s US sanctions obliterated that line.

The decision by the US Treasury last week to designate a number of Russian oligarchs and companies as sanctioned entities, in an effort to curb the country’s “worldwide malign activity”, has transformed investor sentiment and led to buyers fleeing Russia across debt and equities, write Sam Kerr and Francesca Young.

Loans bankers are struggling to digest the implications of the new round of US sanctions on Russian oligarchs and companies, announced by the Treasury on April 6.

DCM bankers have seen an evaporation of their Russian bond business this week reminiscent of 2014 when US and EU financial sanctions were first put in place against the country. Fears of further sanctions have meant that the whole Russian bond market is under scrutiny, and pressure.

Risky assets are often beholden to perceptions of geopolitical risk, though in recent times that has been a minor factor in price movements. Perhaps this dynamic is about to change.

Rusal bondholders are in a pickle. They have been told by the US Treasury that they have 60 days to dump the sanctioned Russian company’s bonds, but trading has halted, leaving them stuck with the debt. Investors are lost as to how to value the bonds in their portfolios and are scrambling to work out how they can legally continue to hold and mark them.