Russia's largest bank founds Swiss commodity trading company

The Russian Sberbank has opened a branch on the Alpenstrasse in the city of Zug for the handling of raw materials transactions. According to a statement by the bank, Sber Trading Swiss AG is to become "the heart of Sberbank's international physical raw material business". The CEO of Sber Trading Swiss AG is Denis Lunin, who was previously responsible for the development of the physical raw materials and fixed-income securities business at Russian and international banks.

Headquarters of the Sberbank on the Alpenstrasse in Zug.

The new company specialises in international commodity trading such as oil, petroleum products, coal, metals, bulk materials and agricultural commodities. It also handles the supply and sale of raw materials, including their storage, transport and distribution, as well as the financial aspects. According to the communication, Sberbank plans to work primarily with its own customers, producers and consumers of raw materials in Russia and the CIS countries. The first transactions are expected to be carried out in the third quarter of this year, according to Anatolij Popov, deputy chairman of the Executive Committee of the bank. “The creation of STS in the European jurisdiction will help us to enter new markets, and increase the scale and diversification of our commodity operations,”

Sberbank, which is based in Moscow, is the largest bank in Russia and is majority owned by the Russian government. The rest of the shares are owned by domestic and international investors. It has branches in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Austria, Central and Eastern Europe, the Ukraine and Zurich.