MOSCOW, Dec 26 (Reuters) – Russia’s second largest bank VTB maintained its net profit target of 500 billion roubles ($6.4 billion) for 2025 after reporting results for January-November on Friday and saying it was engaged in restructuring talks with corporate clients.
VTB said its net profit for 11 months of the year fell by 3.3% year-on-year to 437.2 billion roubles ($5.61 billion) with net interest income up 2.5-fold from November last year. VTB shares were up 0.6% on the Moscow Exchange.
Russian banks have maintained strong profits in 2025 despite a slowdown in corporate lending growth, driven by a general cooling of the economy, with gross domestic product (GDP) growth expected to fall to around 1% from 4.3% last year.
“We targeted 500 billion roubles of net profit for the year and we are maintaining this target,” said First Deputy CEO Dmitry Pyanov. In 2024, VTB reported net profit of 550 billion roubles.
Some major Russian corporations, including giant Russian Railways, the country’s biggest employer, are seeking to restructure their debt due to high servicing costs pushed up by the central bank’s tough monetary policy to fight inflation.
Pyanov said that share of restructured corporate loans has grown to 11% of the total portfolio as of the end of November from 10% in the previous month as the bank was negotiating convenient payment schedules with clients.
Pyanov said that the ongoing restructuring of corporate loans will have no immediate impacts on VTB’s reserves and other indicators since the bank is not losing its income on interest. VTB held 17 trillion roubles ($218.79 billion) in corporate debt in November.
“The overwhelming majority of these restructurings occur without any losses for the bank, so in this situation it affects us in terms of the workload. That is, we have to participate in negotiations and attend meetings,” Pyanov said.
($1 = 77.7000 roubles)
(Reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya; Writing by Gleb Bryanski; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
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