Saad Ullah
Dealing With Interros
The repo transaction was done with a private investment company based in Moscow, Interros Group. The financial company is nearly a 3 decade old organizationfounded by the Russian oligarch, Vladimir Potanin. The company has stakes in big names such as mining firm Norilsk Nickel, ski resort developing firm Rosa Khutor and pharmaceutical Petrovax Pharm.
Vice President Sberbank and global markets department head, Andrei Shemetov, said in the Reuters report the transaction is legal in all aspects, with the only difference being that it was “concluded in electronic format using a smart contract and digital signatures through the IT platform of Sberbank”.
Speaking further he said, “the transaction is a currency repo secured by the pledge of Eurobonds of the Russian issuer of the first tier” and, “In the long term, the conclusion of transactions through the blockchain platform will reduce transaction costs and errors through automation, as well as increase transparency and trust among all participants in the financial market”.
Though Shemetov never detailed about the actual numbers involved in the blockchain transaction, he did mention that it was the size of an average repo deal. This indicates that the trial was done in real world environments and actual money was involved.
Sberbank’s Love for Blockchain
Sberbank’s actual repo transaction shows that it has realized that the technology has a lot to offer banking sector in terms of efficiency, speed and low costs. Recently, in October, the bank’s CEO, Herman Gref, had also spoken in favour of the decentralized technology, saying that blockchain technology would be ready for proper adoption in the coming 2 to 3 years.
Saad Ullah
