NEW YORK, February 28. /TASS/. Investors have begun looking for ways to circumvent anti-Russian sanctions to buy Russian assets, while shares of companies operating in Russia available to them on the world market have grown by tens of percent since the start of negotiations between Russia and the United States, Bloomberg reported.
As Grigory Marinichev, a partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in New York, told the agency, hedge funds, family offices and private investors are showing interest in Russian assets.
"They want to be the first ones in the trade. But for now, there is not much we can tell them other than to follow the news," he said.
As the agency writes, investors are "buying up anything that has even a tenuous link to Russia."
According to him, Rusal shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange grew by 75% in February. This year, shares of the Austrian Raiffeisen bank and the Hungarian OTP have grown by 35% and 11%, respectively. The Austrian bank has a division in Russia, and the Hungarian bank continues to operate in the country despite European sanctions.
However, some experts warn investors against optimism regarding possible deals in Russia, pointing to the scale of the restrictive measures of Western countries, the agency says. As the Center for European Policy Analysis points out, "it would take years to make Russia investible again."
On February 12, Russian President Vladimir Putin and American leader Donald Trump spoke on the phone. The presidents discussed a wide range of topics, including the Ukrainian conflict and bilateral relations. On February 18, high-ranking delegations of Russia and the United States met in Riyadh. Following the meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reported that the parties had reached an agreement on the earliest possible appointment of Russian ambassadors to the United States and US ambassadors to Russia.