Aliens among state banks

Monday, April 25, the Russian subsidiary »HSBC, Europe's largest banking group, said the departure from the market of financial services to individual persons. Statement was not unexpected. In Russia, this is not the first case where foreign bank or reduces the lines of business, or goes away altogether. Suffice it to recall the British Barclays, which announced the sale of its subsidiaries operating in the Russian retail market, has twice: in 1998 and 2011. Representatives of Barclays explained it stiff competition in the segment of private lending. And in late 2010 - early 2011 expressed their intention to abandon the development of Russian retail Spanish Santander, Belgian group KBC and the Scandinavian Swedbank. Dutch Rabobank general closed a subsidiary in Russia. Press release, published on the site of HSBC, explains why the solution is incomplete. Available to Reuters was a bank document, in which HSBC private clients call to close their accounts before 30 June 2011. "Analysis of our strategy has shown that the most promising avenue for HSBC in Russia is the provision of services to corporate clients and financial institutions. Therefore, we decided to leave the retail business and reduce the presence in the private banking to representation ", - quotes Reuters the head of HSBC in Russia Hussein Ozkayya. "Times", referring to expert opinion from an article published in The Wall Street Journal, reported that the decision was due to stiff competition from Russian state-owned banks - Sberbank and VTB. Channel Portal Bank.ru, close to the situation, firstly, expressed the view that now is hardly appropriate to speak of a general trend minimize business in Russia by all foreign banks. He believes that now can only talk about withdrawal from the market for those financial institutions that relied on the "European" standards of building a business - so-called high-street banking. However, our experts agreed that "an additional factor, of course, is the pressure from the state-owned banks, which gradually close in efficiency to Western brands and offer a Russian user exactly the same preferences. On the question of why foreign banks are scaling down their business in Russia, the portal Bank.ru addressed to the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank Intesa, Professor Antonio Fallico. In his opinion, this question is not correct, because the care of some of the biggest international banking groups on the background of post-crisis trends are global in nature and does not apply to any of the overseas markets in particular. As for Russia, the last macro-economic statistics and economic situation in the world commodity markets, by contrast, indicates the prospects for economic growth, which is directly related to the growth of the banking sector, "he said. "For us it is obvious that the so-called withdrawal of foreign banks in Russia - is nothing more than a revision of a number of banks in its development strategy. In this context, talk about trends, which determines the ratio of foreign business to the prospects of doing business in our country is wrong, "- said Antonio Fallico.