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16 January 2009
Global markets: Weekly overview
12 January 2009
The Russian market opened higher in January
26 December 2008
The Russian equity market advanced supported by strong buying from domestic investors
Troika Dialog Is Considering Starting Banking Operations
Bloomberg
1 December 2008
Troika Dialog, the 17-year-old Moscow-based brokerage and investment bank, is considering changing its business model by starting banking operations amid this year’s turmoil in Russian capital markets.
"We’re looking at what's going on in the financial markets, and we see a serious trend pushing us in the direction to become a bank," Chairman Ruben Vardanian said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
Troika Dialog has not approached Russia’s central bank about applying for a commercial banking license. Still, he cited the example of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the New York-based securities firms which registered as banks with U.S. regulators this year.
"We are not in negotiations or discussions, we are more thinking about what will be the right model for us in the future," Vardanian said. "The capital markets are closed, the interbank market is closed because we’re not a bank, and this is the question that's coming back is do we need to develop more retail branches?"
Troika Dialog currently has 85,000 customers in Russia and 23 branches, Vardanian said. The market for Russian initial public offerings has plunged this year, and bond sales have fallen amid declining commodity prices, an economic slowdown, and global avoidance of riskier equities and debt.
Vardanian said that Troika has "survived" the crisis in Russian financial markets this fall and added that it is "not easy" to run a brokerage in the current market environment.
