Raiffeisen's Russian unit reports H1 profit rise to $1.05 billion

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Austrian lender Raiffeisen Bank International's Russian subsidiary reported a 17.8% year-on-year increase in first-half profits, the unit said in a results filing.

Raiffeisenbank, the subsidiary, reported first-half profit of 83.9 billion roubles ($1.05 billion), up from 71.3 billion roubles a year earlier, according to Russian accounting standards.

With Western sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine blocking most major Russian banks from access to the SWIFT global payments system, RBI, the biggest Western bank in Russia, has been profiting from handling valuable international money transfers and earning high interest on deposits.

The bank has come under intense pressure from the United States as well as European regulators to pare its ties to Russia, something it is now doing.

In the second quarter, RBI swung to a loss after a 1.2 billion euro ($1.4 billion) write-off over a legal dispute in Russia.

The Russian unit of Italian lender UniCredit posted a 39% year-on-year rise in first-half profit, net of currency effects, boosted by a sharp drop in loan loss provisions and trading gains, according to financial data the lender published in late July.

A Russian court last week lifted interim measures that effectively banned RBI from selling its subsidiary. RBI said just one hurdle had been removed, while others hampering any sale, such as regulatory approval from the Russian authorities, remain.

($1 = 79.8455 roubles)

($1 = 0.8628 euros)

(Reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya; Writing by Alexander MarrowEditing by Tomasz Janowski)

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