MOSCOW, January 31. /TASS/. The assets owned by Russian residents that have been blocked outside of the country, total 5.7 trillion rubles ($81 bln), with over 20% held by Russian retail investors, Director of the Central Bank’s Investment Finance Intermediation Department Olga Shishlyannikova told a conference dubbed ‘Russian financial market facing global challenges. Results and forecasts’ on Tuesday.

"As of November 30, the blocked assets were worth 5.7 trillion rubles, of which slightly over 20% are assets owned by retail investors," she said.

This fact was taken into consideration when the decision was made to ban non-qualified investors from acquiring foreign securities, Shishlyannikova added.

According to the Central Bank’s instruction, Russian brokers are to suspend execution of any request by non-qualified investors on purchasing securities of foreign issuers from unfriendly countries starting from 2023. Brokers started limiting transactions with foreign securities on October 1, 2022. Back then, those transactions were blocked, as a result of which their share of foreign securities in the portfolio of non-qualified investors started exceeding 15%. The threshold was reduced to 10% in November, and to 5% in December.

According to Shishlyannikova, the freezing of assets will continue its negative influence in 2023 and beyond. "In response, in order to balance the respective actions of foreign regulators, restrictions were also imposed on management by non-residents of assets that they had in Russian jurisdiction, first in accordance with the Central Bank’s instruction, and later - in accordance with the President’s decree. This allowed creating a certain balance on blocked assets, which enables us to expect a certain negotiating position on the issue," she explained.