Barclays’ Exposure to Ukraine Tensions is ‘Limited,’ CEO Says
Barclays’ Exposure to Ukraine Tensions is ‘Limited,’ CEO Says
(Bloomberg) --
Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer C.S. Venkatakrishnan said any impact from the tensions between Russia and Ukraine would be limited on the bank.
“From a financial point of view, our exposures are limited,” the executive, also known as Venkat, said on a call with reporters Wednesday. “We have been out of Russia for many, many years and we have exercised a lot of care and diligence on on-boarding Russian entities and Russian clients.”
So far, U.S. sanctions have targeted a pair of state-owned Russian banks, VEB.RF and Promsvyazbank as well as three members of Russia’s elite with close ties to the Kremlin. The penalties also sought to freeze future purchases of Russian sovereign debt. The U.K. has said it will sanction five Russian banks and three high net-worth individuals. The Kremlin denies it has any plans to invade Ukraine.
Venkat said the bank has a “robust and straightforward process for changes in sanctions regime.” The moment the sanctions were announced in the U.K. and U.S. “we took those names, we put them through our system and screened them.”
He declined to provide further details, beyond noting that the lender’s “trading exposure is fairly limited and under control.”
His comments echo those from HSBC Holdings Plc on Tuesday. Chief Financial Officer Ewen Stevenson said on Bloomberg Television that the lender had a “very small business in Russia,” and its “overall exposure is very, very modest.”
He said the lender had been looking at the “second- and third-order consequences of what may happen if Russia were to invade Ukraine,” but overall “this is not going to be a major geopolitical event that’s really going to dislocate the markets at this point.”
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