Russian broker urges foreigners to join frozen asset swap scheme

MOSCOW (Reuters) -A Russian broker on Monday urged foreign investors to sign up to its asset swap scheme aimed at freeing up funds blocked by sanctions, although one lawyer advising Western clients sounded sceptical the plan would get off the ground.

Investitsionnaya Palata said it was now accepting bids from foreign-based investors looking to swap frozen assets, having already collected offers from Russian residents of what they want to exchange.

Under the plan, foreign investors would use funds frozen in Russia to buy shares held by Russian investors in the West in companies like Alphabet, Tesla and Microsoft. Similar arrangements would be made in reverse.

Moscow has presented the scheme as a way for both Russian and foreign investors to free up funds stranded by Western sanctions and Russian countermeasures since the start of the conflict in Ukraine more than two years ago.

However, it is unclear whether Western authorities would cooperate with the asset swaps.

“There is no legal framework for this,” said Grigory Marinichev, a lawyer at Morgan Lewis, adding that only two of its more than 100 mostly U.S. clients with blocked assets in Russia had expressed even cautious interest in participating.

“It concerns exchanging one set of blocked shares into another set of blocked shares. Russia thinks these shares will suddenly be released, which is a big misunderstanding,” Marinichev said.

Many frozen assets of Russian investors are held in Europe. Euroclear, one of the depositories that holds Russian securities, has said previously it was difficult to assess if the Russian proposal was doable. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Investitsionnaya Palata, which is not under Western sanctions, said it had received over one million offers from Russian retail investors looking to take part in the scheme, with a total securities value of 35.31 billion roubles ($392 million).

“In total, approximately 60% of the foreign securities included in the pool are shares and depositary receipts of foreign issuers and approximately 40% are units of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) composed of foreign shares,” it said in a statement.

The broker has formed 100 lots of securities that can be bid for. The average value of the lots is 353.1 million roubles. Bids can be submitted until July 5.

Foreign securities would be credited to special transit securities accounts should non-residents’ bids be accepted, it said.

Investitsionnaya Palata CEO Alexey Sedushkin told Reuters last month that he would consider the unblocking of securities worth 40-50 billion roubles a good result.

($1 = 90.1100 roubles)

(Reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya in Moscow and Alexander Marrow in London; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Mark Potter)