Q&A: How VTB is increasingly looking to Asia

With the Russian economy stymied by the West’s sanctions the operating conditions for state-controlled lender VTB Group are hardly ideal.

And yet profits are surging at Russia's second-largest bank.

Riccardo Orcel, deputy chief executive of VTB Group and head of VTB International, tells FinanceAsia how Russia’s second-biggest bank by assets is scouting for business opportunities in China where it is expanding its footprint.

Although still a long way short of the volumes achieved in 2016, outbound Asian mergers and acquisitions in Russia totalled almost $1.8 billion in 2018, Dealogic data shows.