High Dollar Interest Rates Are Attracting Investors

For Russians, still reeling from the shock of their biggest financial scandal since the Soviet Union fell apart, MMM-style pyramid schemes may be out of favor, but high dollar interest rates are in.


The risks are high -- nobody knows how long a bank or a firm will last -- but the yields are high as well.


"Sunrise guarantees interest of 42 percent on your hard-currency investments," says one newspaper advertisement.


Jackson & Williams says its promised interest rate of up to 60 percent a year comes with guarantees of "absolute reliability."


On paper the promises are less attractive than the 3,000 percent offered by investment firm MMM, described as a classic pyramid operation by a series of Russian officials.


But MMM slashed the price of its shares last week leaving thousands of Russians holding virtually worthless paper. Hundreds of investors lost their savings overnight and faith in such investment schemes has receded.


Moscow sharebroker Sergei Sheikov said speculation by small-scale MMM investors was a tiny fraction of "the speculative investments of other banks and companies."


Even commercial banks, playing a slightly less profitable game from the investors' point of view than the less-well-known dollar investment funds, offer 15 percent on dollar deposits, well above rates offered by Western banks.


"There is a lot of speculative money spinning around out there," said one Western banker.


Economists said commercial banks could pay interest rates above world levels because they charged high rates for their own dollar loans and because ruble deposit rates were higher than the average monthly depreciation of the ruble.


Banks can change dollars into rubles and invest them at annual interest rates of up to 200 percent -- almost 17 percent a month under Russia's method of calculating rates.


The Central Bank refinancing rate of 150 percent works out at 12.5 percent a month. But the ruble fell only 3.6 percent against the dollar in July, so banks can make a healthy profit even after they change rubles back into dollars. Monthly Russian inflation was 5.1 percent in July.


"Russians are bringing a portion of their money back from abroad to invest in the domestic market because the yields are much higher," said Victor Huaco of LTS Finance.


A Russian banker said some foreign firms were playing the domestic market because profits were much bigger than those they could make at home.


"Some firms are making profits of 100 percent in our markets," he said. "They can afford an expensive dollar bridging loan to fund their investment here."


Advertisements for dollar investments have sprung up across Moscow in recent months, with firms and banks offering high returns in television commercials and in newspapers.


But bankers said the interest rates actually paid on dollar investments were often far lower than the headline rates in the advertisements.


"By the time you close the contract and include a somewhat dubious guarantee the rate is no longer so attractive," said Yury Obolentsev of Mezhekonombank. "And the risk is huge."


A German banker was more blunt:


"You may have to assume you will never see your money again," he said.


Huaco estimated banks' short-term dollar investments at "several hundred million dollars a year" but stressed that nobody knew the true figure.