{"id":406393,"date":"2025-11-12T20:55:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T20:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/406393\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T20:55:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T20:55:16","slug":"putin-oks-citis-sale-of-russian-banks-to-mikhail-prokhorov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/406393\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin OKs Citi’s sale of Russian banks to Mikhail Prokhorov"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin<\/a> has rubber-stamped the sale of Citi\u2019s Russian banking operations to Renaissance Capital, an investment firm that belongs to billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, the former owner of the Brooklyn Nets.<\/p>\n

The presidential order was published on the Kremlin\u2019s website<\/a> on Wednesday, confirming a key step in the Jane Fraser-led lender\u2019s planned exit from Russia, three years after Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine that has killed tens of thousands of people.<\/p>\n

Renaissance Capital is part of Prokhorov\u2019s Onexim conglomerate. <\/p>\n

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin signed a decree that effectively rubber-stamped the sale of Citi\u2019s Russia operations. via REUTERS<\/p>\n

The 60-year-old, who sold the NBA outfit to Joseph Tsai for $2.3 billion in 2019 amid reported pressure from Putin<\/a>, fled to Israel two months after Russia invaded its smaller neighbor.<\/p>\n

The sale to Renaissance, which had been complicated by wider Western sanctions and asset freezes on Russian entities, still requires approval from US regulators. <\/p>\n

It follows similar exits by Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs, Germany\u2019s Deutsche Bank, and French financial firm Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 G\u00e9n\u00e9rale.<\/p>\n

A Citi spokeswoman told The Post: \u201cThe transaction is subject to additional approvals and we won\u2019t be commenting further at this stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

News of the diktat, which provided no details of the price or timeline of the transaction, was first reported by Bloomberg.<\/a><\/p>\n

The move comes weeks after Citi\u2019s board of directors voted to make Scotland-born Fraser<\/a> the bank\u2019s board chair while awarding her a $25 million bonus of restricted stock.<\/p>\n

Renaissance Capital is part of Mikhail Prokhorov\u2019s Onexim empire. He was the first non-American to own an NBA franchise, snapping up the then-New Jersey Nets in 2009. Euroleague Basketball via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Citi first announced plans to sell its Russian consumer business in 2021 as part of Fraser\u2019s global restructuring plan. <\/p>\n

But in August 2022, it went further and announced that it would wind down all of its consumer and commercial banking operations in Russia over the war, which Moscow merely refers to as a \u201cspecial military operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bank had approximately $11.7 billion in clients\u2019 exposure to Russia as of the end of September, the majority of which were corporate dividends that the Russian government would not allow Citi to remit.<\/p>\n

Citi has been present in the Russian retail banking market since the early 2000s. But the lender has accelerated its exit plans since Russia invaded Ukraine. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Fraser is planning to offload some 14 banking units worldwide, and Citi is expected to finalize the sale of its subsidiary in Poland while shuttering its activities in Korea and China as part of its drive to slash costs.<\/p>\n

Citi is also looking to sell its Mexico consumer banking unit, known as Banamex, through an IPO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has rubber-stamped the sale of Citi\u2019s Russian banking operations to Renaissance Capital, an investment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3767],"tags":[7,670,247,3803,3025,61494,61495,6,671,27585,32993,61496,61497],"class_list":{"0":"post-406393","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn-nets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-brooklyn","10":"tag-brooklyn-nets","11":"tag-brooklynnets","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-citigroup","14":"tag-mikhail-prokhorov","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-nets","17":"tag-russia","18":"tag-ukraine","19":"tag-ukraine-war","20":"tag-vladimir-putin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115538724613662579","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}