Russian stocks fall on woes of European banking system

MOSCOW, Sep 30 (PRIME) -- Russian stocks contracted on Friday as a positive impact from an OPEC production freeze agreement was short-lived and outweighed by concerns about the condition of the European banking system, analysts said.

The MICEX fell 0.91% to 1,978.00 and the RTS decreased 0.73% to 990.88.

“The market was under pressure as oil prices were neutral during the day, while the European stock floors were in the red zone worried by a growing risk of Deutsche Bank collapse,” Andrei Lyushin, a deputy chairman of Locko-Bank’s management board, said.

The Brent oil price fell 0.81% to U.S. $49.20 per barrel as of 5.53 p.m. Moscow time according to the ICE exchange.

Andrei Kochetkov, an analyst at Otkritie Broker, said that worries about Deutsche Bank expanded to the whole European banking system. The Sochi investment forum’s mood was upbeat, but it was unable to have an impact on the market.

“The most important thing here is that the mineral extraction tax may be raised from January 1. The Finance Ministry plans to receive up to 370 billion rubles in taxes from Gazprom and oil companies,” Kochetkov said.

Vitaly Manzhos, a senior analyst at Bank Obrazovanie, said that a principal decision on the future contraction of combined output of OPEC states is only a verbal intervention, while problems of the European banking sector may end very badly for the market very soon.

Kochetkov said that oil price dynamics and the tax concerns weighed upon the oil and gas sector today. Gas giant Gazprom and oil companies Lukoil and Rosneft lost 0.30%, 0.45% and 1.83%, respectively.

Manzhos said that common and preferred shares of power utility Russian Grids outperformed the market and grew 6.02% and 3.74%, respectively, after the company’s CEO Oleg Budargin said that Russian Grids is ready to pay 50% of net profit in dividends in the long run.

Below are the MICEX’ five most active stocks on Friday:

Company	Change, %	Last price, rbl	Trading volume, bln rbl
Sberbank	-2.11	145.34	8.456
Gazprom	-0.30	134.90	3.205
Lukoil	-0.45	3068.00	1.952
Norilsk Nickel	-1.07	9812.00	1.341
Surgutneftegas prefs	-1.58	28.995	1.325

(63.1581 rubles – U.S. $1)

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