Russia orders block on foreign clients' bids to sell Russian securities | Hacker News Reader

Russia orders block on foreign clients' bids to sell Russian securities

reuters.com

121 pointslxm81 comments

This is a fairly obvious ploy to lock up liquidity and make sure no trades are on the ticker.

With no trades on the ticket prices will look stable to naive participants but the spread will get gigantic.

The smart money will still be exiting fast.

I wonder who the naive participants would be in this case. Russia's institutional investors would presumably know better, no?

Correct. This is purely for the “yahoo” equivalent consumer market. Russia listed equities are effectively frozen at this point.

except, how is it liquid if they cant divest.

What are the goals of this action? Is this to prevent a fire sale from foreign institutional holders who are exiting their positions in Russian securities?

Maybe also preserving the ability to seize these assets from foreigners, instead of letting them convert it to cash and move their wealth beyond Russia's reach?

This seems more like discriminating based on nationality.

So far no sanctions are seizing assets of ordinary Russians.. nobody is even talking about this.

Are you sure? I see many reporting their personal balances frozen by foreign institutions, and outright refused to return.

All sanctions mostly hurt regular people.

I'm sure the sudden drop in the FX rate will hurt those living paycheck to paycheck the most, instead of the rich who don't even hold any currency, just valuable assets.

Seizure of central bank foreign reserves on this scale (600 BILLION), I believe, is entirely unprecedented?

All it's going to do it hurt the poor. Oligarchs are going to be A-OK.

This was not only talked about but there are now draft laws in the EU about exactly that

  Article 1c 1. It shall be prohibited for Union central securities depositories to provide any services as defined in the Annex of Regulation (EU) No 909/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council\* for transferable securities issued after 12 April 2022 to any Russian national or natural person residing in Russia or any legal person, entity or body established in Russia. 2. Paragraph 1 shall not apply to natural persons who are nationals of a Member State or having a temporary or permanent residence permit in a Member State

  Article 1d 1. It shall be prohibited to sell euro denominated transferable securities issued after 12 April 2022 or units in collective investment undertakings providing exposure to such securities, to any Russian national or natural person residing in Russia or any legal person, entity or body established in Russia. 2. Paragraph 1 shall not apply to nationals of a Member State or natural persons having a temporary or permanent residence permit in a Member State

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

I'm trying to figure out how this reply was intended and failing, it seems like it is based on something other than what I meant to say though, so I'm just going to re-iterate my point in case it wasn't clear.

I wasn't suggesting that anyone was considering seizing assets of ordinary Russians. I was suggesting that Russia might choose to seize the assets of non-russians, and that this move might be to keep that option open. This suggestion was based off of reporting that they are considering doing exactly that

I'm having trouble finding a well known and neutral outlet reporting on it, so [1] is the american propaganda outlet version, and [2] is the Russian propaganda outlet saying the same thing (which I would usually avoid linking to since they lie left right and center, but it does make the point that Russia really is threatening this).

[1] https://www.rferl.org/a/medvedev-end-diplomacy-russia/317250...

[2] https://tass.com/politics/1411915

if western investors are forced to own russian companies, it means they are forced to care about well being of russian companies. maybe this is supposed to make western investors lobby against sanctions.

I posted this in a different thread (on BP's divestment), but I think it applies here: this technique seems likely to backfire, since companies may view Russia as indeterminately risky and simply choose to value their holdings at $0.

I'm not sure what their end game is here, but buying back foreign interests in your country for pennies on the dollar seems like a much smarter move than triggering a crisis in faith. But maybe that's why I don't run the Kremlin!

That also puts you on track to become the next Argentina, if you stay on the track.

Which country is "you" here? If you mean Russia, I agree: it's hard to see how this goes anywhere good for them.

Yeah, Russia. They're doomed if they're really doing this. It's quite close to a default on national debt.

Ask Argentinians how it's like to live in a country that does that.

Russia defaulted in 1998 and it wasn't pretty for the population

It's almost like they're sanctioning themselves!

This is madness. If they keep on this track, in about 20-30 years they'll become an Argentina.

I think yes, that, but also to keep the currency from the sale in Russia. If they allow the sale by a foreign entity, cash will be leave the country at a time when their banks are about to get cut off

I think this actually has much less to do with "protecting" the stock market (as discussed in comments), than protecting the ruble. Because for sure the majority of foreign investors will want to sell their securities ASAP and exit the market in USD, not rubles. And therefore that'll create a large pressure on the ruble.

I'm guessing that hump in the Russian yield curve is about to be more like the Burj khalifa than a camel

>I'm guessing that hump in the Russian yield curve is about to be more like the Burj khalifa than a camel

There won't be a curve, it will be a yield cliff taller than the burj. Mind you, they were already at 10% interest rates and inflation. Economists are going to need to invent new words for how much of a failure the Russian economy will be.

People might as well not go to work, they know their employers wont be paying them; even if they did pay them, the amount will be meaningless. Might as well take to the streets.

But dont worry, russian central bank says they are solvent... despite the reality that max withdrawals are $20 and lineups are very long. LOL!

Looks like a reasonable response to "freezing" (read, seizing) assets of the Central Bank of Russia and the credit rating downgrades. Not only it plays role of deterrence to some extent (destabilize our markets and your investors will suffer), but also significantly limits amount of liquidity which will be able to leave the Russian market, thus helping to support their currency.

> Not only it plays role of deterrence to some extent (destabilize our markets and your investors will suffer)

IMHO, that's not a bad thing. Investors and companies should be more cautious about getting enmeshed with authoritarian regimes, but they're not going to learn unless their choices blow up in their face.

Do what you gotta do.

Amounts this large though can reveal unexpected exposure for a lot of institutional banks and investors. Although Russian securities market is not that large, it can be just a big enough hole in balance sheets, I think governments will bail them out institutions experience stress over, good luck all!

What does this mean, practically? Market paralysis -- 0 volume, but the "buy price" maintained?

I don't think there's a guarantee the price will be maintained.

I'd also like to understand this: how does Russia intend to prevent foreign clients from making direct sales of securities to other foreign (or even domestic) clients? Are they saying that they just won't honor those sales?

This sounds like a terrific way to have foreign companies value their Russian assets at near-zero, since it's not clear whether they're actually still securities at that point.

> This sounds like a terrific way to have foreign companies value their Russian assets at near-zero, since it's not clear whether they're actually still securities at that point.

This is my take -- I'm confused by it because I can't believe this is actually it.

But it could be that the central bank is implementing the only token measures it actually can take, to be seen to attempt to satisfy an otherwise impossible, maybe even deranged demand for wish-fulfilment from the Kremlin.

I feel that not enough time is yet being spent asking the question: what if this is all not just figuratively the work of an insane person, but actually the work of an insane person?

This strikes me as a prelude to seizure of foreign-owned assets. In that light, locking trades seems obvious.

Maybe, but I think that's pretty unlikely at this juncture: not only are there not a lot of assets they could seize punitively (I assume the Kremlin is not looking to make enemies out of hitherto neutral countries like India), but any seizure would take Russia's financial status from "pariah, but quantifiably risky" to "unquantifiably risky."

Invading neighbors and rattling your nuclear saber in a world with MAD probably ought to take you to "unquantifiably risky" already.

Right, if France takes an oligarch's house and boat in Nice, why not take a French billionaire's assets in Russia and give them to that Oligarch? Stock in a gas company may not make up for the loss of a house and yacht but it is something.

I suspect it's more of a closed-economy, fortress-Russia mindset we'll see, not compensating some oligarchs.

I doubt there are many French billionaires with personal assets in Russia. Their companies may have some capital in the form of Louis Vuitton shops in Moscow, but that is peanuts in the grand scheme of things. The only really valuable assets are shares in resource extraction companies since that's essentially what Russia's economy is based upon.

I believe you are absolutely correct.

BP's 25 billion stake in Rosneft will most likely be nationalized.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/masonbissada/2022/02/27/bp-drop...

There are probably others I don't know about, as Russia received 30 billion in FDI just in 2019 alone.

I presume all foreign Russian sovereign bond holders are going to be wiped out also?

I don't know what else can one expect after freezing central bank reserves to the tune of half a trillion dollars. Hopefully not a nuclear war.

The corner Russia is being pushed in looks incredibly dangerous. I agree with this tweet:

https://twitter.com/PaulSonne/status/1498075412194332673?t=y...

The consequences of this could severely go out of hand and the chance of nuclear encounter is non-zero at this point.

Nukes will launch before the Putin regime falls. The world needs to punish Russia but not back it into an existential crisis.

That's the scarry thing. What if these thing are already out of control and we pushed the pieces that makes the whole domino chain fail. We wouldn't see it until it's too late.

Jesus, this is scary.

I hope and pray that Russia's nuclear arsenal and delivery systems aren't as operational as everyone, including Putin thinks. I'm hoping the yes men and corruption has led to a system that isn't able to actually launch or detonate anymore. I know it's a stretch, but I'll continue to hope it's so.

The chance of a nuclear encounter is always non-zero. There could always be someone who instead of shooting up a school or church decides to shoot up the world. Or someone sell a nuke to terrorist. If you want to talk probabilities, well, what is the new probability? The answer is that no one has any clue how to even evaluate the probability. And what if the worst happens: Putin says "I'm going to nuke somebody unless you give me Ukraine"? Or he feels like he's losing and just unilaterally decides to take the world down with him? You can't really do anything about those scenarios, so you pretty much have to just assume he won't do that and act accordingly and try not to push him into a scenario where that looks like a good option.

This is all not new. From the 2014 Crimea annexation:

https://thediplomat.com/2014/07/russia-threatens-nuclear-str...

https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-russia-kisely...

Rumors about "Putin has gone insane" also don't help. The man is just continuing his plan from 2014 and earlier now that the U.S. has an indecisive and weak president.

The entire point of MAD is that the chance of nuclear encounter is always nonzero: if you know with absolute certainty that the other powers will never use their nuclear weapons, then you might as well treat them as not possessing them.

I agree that the consequences of this will be dire, but I haven't seen any real evidence yet that they'll be "nuclear exchange" levels of dire. It's more likely that Russia will use its substantial reserves to temporarily preserve the ruble. When that eventually collapses, everyday Russians will begin denominating transactions in foreign currencies and the Russian government will go back to using gold the way the USSR did.

If it is a security you still need to clear the sale with the exchange within a short period of time, even if you made the sale off market.

I get it's like the freezing of ~40% of Russia's foreign reserves the US announced. So still the property of their owners - not seized - but cannot be moved either.

This is seizure in all but name. By 'freezing' US dollars indefinitely, you effectively take them out of circulation, allowing you to print the same number of new dollars for yourself without causing inflation.

Looks like the Moscow stock exchange will continue working, while the foreigners wouldn't be able to sell through the accredited brokers. I don't think the direct sales are possible without actual stock certificates, and most stock is traded through the broker accounts without clients getting the certificates.

For some definition of working, I suppose -- having a large portion of your capital base unable to exercise trades fundamentally undermines trust in the exchange itself.

Yeah, it'll be as broken as things are in China..

I mean that there is no such limitations for domestic, so some kind of bid/ask, granted skewed, will still be there.

Well I guess now BP can't exit its Rosneft position based on that other thread on the front page.

For individual investors, I wonder how many shares are held on foreign exchanges where this won't effect them. And for institutional investors, I wonder how many are held a western clearinghouse where this also won't an effect.

That assumes there are buyers.

There will always be buyers. But the price might not be what the government wants to see...

If the prices are right, there's bound to be buyers. If you can get some of BP's stake in Rosneft for kopeks on the ruble, why not throw some cash at it?

Ah but are there buyers if the country has demonstrated not only instability but hostility to everyday business and property rights?

I get that there very well may always be someone on the other side of a financial stake. But a country signaling they won’t respect property rights is a huge red flag that business will flee.

Meh. If I had to opportunity to purchase a Russian energy company for 0.1% of what it was valued a year ago, sure why not throw $100 at it? Still a large gamble, but plenty of eager buyers willing to throw some disposable income at the chance.

Would you invest into, say, Iranian oil industry, given a chance to do it very cheaply?

I'm afraid that political / systemic risks are too high to invest more than a token amount.

>If the prices are right, there's bound to be buyers. If you can get some of BP's stake in Rosneft for kopeks on the ruble, why not throw some cash at it?

You get ownership in something that might not exist in the future? Your money, your risk. Feel free I guess.

If you're expecting putin to be assassinated and the war to come to an end in a few days. Might make sense... but you're better putting all your investment in lottery ticket, it's lower risk.

Don't get me wrong, I definitely wouldn't do it either, for money and ethical reasons. But lot of what we call investing is really just gambling.

There are a lot of funds that specialize in the opposite of ethical investment: tobacco companies, oil companies, weapons manufacturers, etc. More likely in countries where sanctions are unlikely to be imposed.

Just one example, the UAE abstained on the UNSC resolution condemning Russia (after all, they have their own war-criminal invasion of Yemen going on, it would be hypocritical of them to criticize Russia for what they themselves have done, just with two or three orders of magnitude higher civilian casualties). Investing in carbon-intensive industries is not good for diversifying their exposure to oil, however. China is another obvious example.

You overestimate people. If there are buyers for dozens of shitcoins, not so unreasonable to think there would not be buyers for actual tangible assets.

Yeah, nothing preserves value like meddling in the market to ban dumping.

They want those assets for themself?

Ohh gee, what are the securities of the nation that threatens the world with nuclear war are worth for the plethora of buyers clamoring to invest?

I suspect they are worth as much as Russian promises of honoring their treaties, contracts, and obligations.

Not invest, divest. They’re trying to stop Western funds from selling off their interest in Russian companies.

I'll happily buy them all for 1% of the face value last week.

Whilst 1% is obviously not the price the market currently values them at, do remember that many Russian stocks went to 0% in 1998. Buying at 1% would still have meant you lost all your money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Russian_financial_crisis

If it weren't for a moral consideration and a very long tail risk of an involuntary shareholder meet up at a prisoner camp as the West's decision-making is further compromised by emotion, there are company that everyone should be lining up to buy.

The book value of many of these resource and agriculture companies is very far from zero. Even with the West's self-destructive energy policies and "let them eat inflation" approach to monetary policy, the continued long-term operation of these companies should be of interest to anyone that likes avoiding mass scale social unrest.

I really wonder if 2 years from now when there's famine and and people are huddling at a community warming centre in the dead of winter because private heating is a luxury good, people will buy the "it was Putin's fault" and "it's worth it for the environment".

For those who don't remember or weren't alive, Long-Term Capital Management was the whale hedge fund of the day and had on staff at least one Nobel laureate, Robert Merton.

They essentially bought into the "let's buy at a discount" plan, too. They were leveraged on a lot of Russian debt. Russia decided to simply default and not pay anything. No restructuring. And LCTM's resulting crash and burn is now a financial history lesson.

Thats a good lesson. Russia does not respect the West and liberalism and considers it weak and only useful in as much as it can be used for own gain.

This is basically what the official government controlled media says all the time.

For someone to sell, there needs to be someone to buy.

GP is saying that nobody sane is gonna buy these securities, so divesting isn’t really possible, and thus blocking divestiture is kinda meaningless. You’re blocking people from doing something they can’t do anyway.

My guess is that given Russias energy reserves (they won’t go away due to war) that there’d be a non zero number of people willing to buy the bounce on that at a minimum.

There is always a buyer of distressed assets. Always. It may not seem like a wise investment to the average HNer but there is an entire world of investing other people's money on different kinds of assets.

And Russia has a lot of desirable assets that could reap dividends after the war is over.

What are the long term implications? I’m not in finance but presumably a Russia could order a block on assets when they’re tanking, which would make me hesitant to buy if / when things smooth over.

Reuters is paywalled, but is getting dumped on HN by the metric ton. Can we find a more friendly news source?

It's actually not a paywall--just a register-wall. And IMO Reuters is a pretty good news source since it is about as neutral as they come.

Don't like it either but was curious enough to look it up this time:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220227225929/https://www.reute...

just turn off javascript

Did you actually bother to try before making such a comment? Turning off JavaScript on Reuters usually results in the entire page being a giant piece of the splash image.

Scroll down.

Yes, of course I tried it, my browser is javascript-off-by-default. You'd be amazed how many websites not only still work, but actually work better.

A lot of news sites have this glitch where turning off javascript results in a mis-scaled hero image. Just flip on reader mode, which scales all images to page-width. Problem solved.

Key bindings for javascript-opt-in and reader-mode are highly recommended. Very easy to add to qutebrowser.

> Scroll down.

100% of the page.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com