VIENNA (Reuters) -Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) swung to a loss in the second quarter after a 1.2 billion euro ($1.4 billion) write-off over a legal dispute in Russia, figures released on Wednesday showed.
The bank’s consolidated loss was 557 million euros in the quarter, compared with a profit of 661 million euros a year earlier.
RBI, the most important Western Bank in Russia, last week said it would “derecognize” 1.2 billion euros in expected proceeds from enforcing claims against Rasperia Trading Limited’s Austrian assets.
In June, a Russian court had rejected RBI’s bid to lift an injunction banning the sale of its local subsidiary.
The ban is tied to a lawsuit brought by Rasperia, a Russian investment firm, after a collapsed deal in which RBI was ordered last year to pay 2 billion euros in damages.
Excluding Russia, the bank posted a profit of 307 million euros, up from 237 million euros in the year-earlier period.
RBI, which came under intense pressure from the United States as well as European regulators to pare its ties to Russia, continued to reduce its loan portfolio in Russia in the first half of the year and is ahead of the schedule agreed with the ECB, the figures showed.
Deposit volumes also declined further.
($1 = 0.8659 euros)
(Reporting by Alexandra Schwarz-Goerlich and Tom Sims, editing by Kirsti Knolle and Miranda Murray)
