FRANKFURT (Reuters) – European bank shares rebounded early Friday from steep falls a day earlier, even as bankers wrestle with the impact of a slew of sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Shares of leading banks rose with the European banking sector trading up 1.3%. That is only a partial recovery from an 8% fall on Thursday.
Details of a package of European sanctions were still a work in progress on Friday as officials were working to finalise the most recent round.
Broadly speaking, the European Union will freeze Russian assets in the bloc and halt its banks’ access to European financial markets as part of what EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell described as “the harshest package of sanctions we have ever implemented”.
“This package includes financial sanctions, targeting 70% of the Russian banking market and key state-owned companies, including in defence,” EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Twitter.
On Thursday, banks with the biggest exposure to Russia fell the most.
That included Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International, which fell 23%, and was up 3.5% on Friday. Societe Generale, which lost 12% on Thursday, was up 1.6%.
(Reporting by Tom Sims and Hakan Ersen, editing by Kirsti Knolle and Miranda Murray)
