Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has rubber-stamped the sale of Citi’s Russian banking operations to Renaissance Capital, an investment firm that belongs to billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, the former owner of the Brooklyn Nets.
The presidential order was published on the Kremlin’s website on Wednesday, confirming a key step in the Jane Fraser-led lender’s planned exit from Russia, three years after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine that has killed tens of thousands of people.
Renaissance Capital is part of Prokhorov’s Onexim conglomerate.
The 60-year-old, who sold the NBA outfit to Joseph Tsai for $2.3 billion in 2019 amid reported pressure from Putin, fled to Israel two months after Russia invaded its smaller neighbor.
The sale to Renaissance, which had been complicated by wider Western sanctions and asset freezes on Russian entities, still requires approval from US regulators.
It follows similar exits by Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs, Germany’s Deutsche Bank, and French financial firm Société Générale.
A Citi spokeswoman told The Post: “The transaction is subject to additional approvals and we won’t be commenting further at this stage.”
News of the diktat, which provided no details of the price or timeline of the transaction, was first reported by Bloomberg.
The move comes weeks after Citi’s board of directors voted to make Scotland-born Fraser the bank’s board chair while awarding her a $25 million bonus of restricted stock.
Citi first announced plans to sell its Russian consumer business in 2021 as part of Fraser’s global restructuring plan.
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 “special military operation.”
The bank had approximately $11.7 billion in clients’ 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.
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.
Citi is also looking to sell its Mexico consumer banking unit, known as Banamex, through an IPO.
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