BNP Paribas is stopping all new business in Russia, joining European peers in winding down their local operations after the country invaded Ukraine.
The Paris-based bank has informed its corporate clients that its local unit will no longer be able to process their transactions from the end of March, the bank said in an emailed statement on Monday.
BNP Paribas is joining an increasing group of lenders that are pulling back from Russia amid wide-ranging sanctions imposed against the country. In the past weeks, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank have all taken steps to cut business in Russia.
BNP previously announced it would stop providing new financing in the country and postponed its investor day to a more appropriate time by the summer. BNP’s total gross exposure to Russia amounted to about 1.3 billion euros at the end of December. The bank exited the local retail banking market in 2012 and ended its Russian consumer finance activities in 2020.
