MOSCOW—Shares in Russia’s two largest lenders, Sberbank and VTB, reversed early losses to trade higher on Tuesday after the state-controlled groups escaped British sanctions on Russian banks. British sanctions targeted Bank Rossiya, Black Sea Bank, Genbank, IS Bank, and Promsvyazbank—smaller lenders of which only the latter is on the Russian central bank’s list of systemically important credit institutions. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also sanctioned three high-net worth individuals in response to Russia’s decision to deploy troops to two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine after recognizing their independence. In 2014, the U.S. Treasury described Bank Rossiya as “the personal bank for senior officials of the Russian Federation” when sanctioning the lender after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. Promsvyazbank was a commercial bank until it was bailed out and nationalized in 2017. It was later turned into a bank specializing in defense sector loans to reduce the exposure of other lenders to …
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