Italy’s UniCredit has abandoned plans to sell its Russian subsidiary and is now considering a full wind-down of its operations in the country, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported, citing several sources.
Rather than selling the bank, the group has shifted to selling off individual assets and sharply cutting costs, Kommersant said. One source told the paper that the retail business in the regions had already been wound down, the corporate business was being wound down as well, and staff reductions were underway, including large severance payments to client managers.
A second source said the group’s primary goal was to scale the business down to a minimum, capitalize the profits, and surrender its banking license.
Lawyers interviewedby Kommersant estimated that liquidation would return significantly more than the roughly 10 percent of capital the bank could expect from a sale, where a discount and a required “voluntary” contribution to the Russian budget would apply. Even so, those funds would be frozen in so-called Type C accounts and could only become accessible through an exchange for Russian assets frozen in the European Union.
Kommersant noted that the group had previously viewed a sale of its Russian bank as the primary route out of the market. Because UniCredit’s Russian subsidiary is on Russia’s list of systemically important banks, any transactions involving its shares require special government authorization.
UniCredit is one of only two remaining Western banks on Russia’s list of systemically important credit institutions, the other being Raiffeisenbank. Russia’s central bank compiles the list, which covers institutions that together account for about 78 percent of the total assets of the Russian banking sector. The list is updated annually. In the summer of 2024, the Russian business daily Vedomosti reported that Russia’s central bank was considering removing Raiffeisenbank from the list, though it remains on it for now.
After the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine in 2022, UniCredit had intended to sell its Russian business. In February 2025, UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel said those plans had not changed, explaining that over the previous three years the bank had held talks with a significant number of counterparties but had been unable to reach an agreement due to “complications and sanctions.” In May, it emerged that a consortium of three UAE-based companies had approached Italy’s treasury with an offer to buy UniCredit’s Russian subsidiary. According to Kommersant’s sources, the ultimate beneficiary of the deal could have been Russia’s Alfa Group.
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