MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin has authorised Armenian investment fund Balchug Capital's purchase of Goldman Sachs' unit in Russia, a government decree published on Friday showed, potentially paving the way for the U.S. bank to fully withdraw from Russia.
Moscow has steadily tightened restrictions on foreign asset sales since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, with banks requiring Putin's approval for any deal.
A source confirmed Goldman Sachs had entered into a binding agreement to dispose of its Russian subsidiary, subject to various conditions.
According to a ranking of banks maintained by banki.ru, the Goldman Sachs subsidiary is Russia's 229th largest lender in terms of net assets.
Balchug Capital did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The fund's CEO and founder David Amaryan oversees all investment activity. Last year, the company acquired U.S. machinery maker Caterpillar's Russian assets.
Only a handful of Western banks, including Austria's Raiffeisen, Italy's UniCredit and Hungary's OTP, are still operating in Russia nearly three years after the conflict in Ukraine began.
Dutch bank ING Groep said this week it had reached an agreement to sell its business in Russia to local company Global Development JSC, taking a 700-million-euro ($726.2 million) hit to its profits.
ING's sale still requires regulatory approvals from the EU. Foreign lenders say that needing approval from Russian authorities before selling assets makes it hard to leave, and presidential approval is no guarantee of a successful exit.
Italy's Intesa Sanpaolo received the green light from Putin to sell its Russian assets in September 2023, but has still not managed to do so.
The bank's CEO said last year it had cut its overall exposure to Russia to a "negligible" level, but it was hard to dispose completely of its local subsidiary.
($1 = 0.9639 euros)
(Reporting by Reuters in Moscow and Alexander Marrow in London; additional reporting by Anastasia Teterevleva; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
