Austria's Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) drops plan to buy a stake in Austrian construction company Strabag from sanctioned Russian billionaire over concerns of sanctions

In recent exchanges with the relevant authorities, RBI has been "unable to obtain the required comfort in order to proceed with the proposed transaction", the bank says on its website.

Therefore, "in an abundance of caution", the bank has decided to walk away from the deal, it says.

RBI planned to buy a 27.78% stake in Strabag, an Austrian construction company, for 1.51 billion euros in cash from Russia-based Rasperia Trading, a holding company controlled by Oleg Deripaska, through the bank's Russian subsidiary AO Raiffeisenbank, and then transfer it to the wider RBI group by issuing a dividend in kind.

However, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the EU, US, and UK sanctioned Deripaska, imposing an asset freeze. The European regulator and the US recently urged RBI to cancel its plan.

Raiffeisen entered the Russian market in the 1990s. Unlike other businesses and banks, it didn't exit Russia after Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine. Today RBI is the largest Western bank in Russia.