Russia's Sberbank and investment bank Troika Dialog today announced the closure of their merger. This signals the creation of the largest universal banking institution in Russia which results in the creation of an undisputed regional market leader.

By Ahsan Sohail

· A total of 293 IPOs were withdrawn/postponed in 2011 for an estimated $61.7bn, the highest number of withdrawn/postponed IPOs since 2008 (308 deals)

Last year will be remembered for instability – economic, financial (in developed countries) and political (in several developing countries). The volatility that dominated the market made the performance of EM bonds rather dull and the bulk of portfolios demonstrated mixed results in 2011, after two more than successful years (2009-10). Despite the huge amount of liquidity that was injected into the financial system by central banks worldwide, the performance of capital markets was disappointing. The reason for this was the revaluation of basic risks on global markets. Even ratings of key benchmarks for the fixed income universe — USTs – were downgraded last year, but yields dropped immediately after this event. It is thus unsurprising that the market was full of paradoxes and risks.

According to expert research published recently, the combined popularity of bank resources in Russia’s social networks (official Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, etc.) has increased by over 50 times since last year. Every third bank out of the country’s Top-100 largest banks today has either established its official resources in social networks or is using new communication channels such as ICQ or Skype. This is almost twice as many as compared to 2010. The total number of subscribers of the largest banks’ official pages in 2011 has reached nearly half a million people.