MILAN (Reuters) - Raiffeisen's share and bonds fell again on Thursday, after Reuters reported earlier this week that Washington was pressing the Austrian bank to cancel a deal with a sanctioned Russian tycoon. The U.S. wants Raiffeisen to ditch the purchase of a $1.6 billion stake in Strabag from a company the Vienna-based builder identified as controlled by Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
The intervention has thrown the deal - which had sparked a rally in Raiffeisen's shares when it was announced in December - into doubt. The report sent shares in the biggest Western bank in Russia tumbling on Wednesday by as much as 16% to a three-month low and Raiffeisen scrapped the sale of a 650 million euro bond, blaming "adverse market reaction to the latest headlines".
On Thursday, Raiffeisen shares were down 1.2% at 1245 GMT. Raiffeisen's December 2026 6% coupon AT1 bond was last trading at 93.661 cents, down from 93.740 at Wednesday's close. Earlier this week, the bonds traded at their highest price since February 2022 but have lost 2.5 cents since then, according to LSEG data. Raiffeisen billed the proposed Strabag deal as a means of unlocking some of the billions of euros stranded in Russia and potentially loosening its ties. However, U.S. government officials are concerned that Deripaska would benefit from the deal. On Wednesday, Raiffeisen said it would not proceed with any deal that would breach or expose it to the risk of sanctions. Analysts had welcomed the deal as a way for Raiffeisen to extract capital from its Russian business. That triggered a rally in its share price, which had been under pressure since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago.Strabag shares rose nearly 4% on Thursday.
(Reporting by Danilo Masoni and Amanda Cooper; Editing by Tommy Reggiori Wilkes and Mark Potter)
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