Russia Urges Companies to Delist From Abroad Amid Sanctions

[Purveyor]

Source: Bloomberg

By Ksenia Galouchko, Anton Doroshev and Evgenia Pismennaya Apr 8, 2014 10:55 AM ET

Russia urged companies to delist their shares from overseas stock exchanges and trade in Moscow in an effort to safeguard them as international sanctions mount against the country after its takeover of Crimea.

“This is a question of economic security,” First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov told reporters after a government meeting near Moscow today. Speaking later in a telephone interview, he said the move isn’t mandatory and that companies should make independent decisions.

President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region last month prompted U.S. and European sanctions and sent the benchmark Micex stock index into a bear market. Higher borrowing costs led the government to scrap ruble-bond auctions in five of the last six weeks. Since the incursion into the Black Sea peninsula on March 1, investors turned to offshore equity trading, with U.K. volume growing faster than in Moscow.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-08/russia-asks-companies-to-delist-from-bourses-abroad-for-security.html

[dipsydoodle]

1. At present its unlikely the EU would step up economic sanctions

Hungary would veto it.