OREANDA-NEWS. April 04, 2013. The decision by Moody's demonstrates the agency’s extremely conservative position.

First of all, the state support of VTB is explained less by the size of the Russian government’s stake in the bank, but rather by the important role that VTB plays in the national economy, the volume of its lending to important infrastructure projects and to strategic industries, as well as by the size of its retail business.

Today VTB is a systemically important bank and it is significance to the Russian economy cannot be overstated.

We would like to underscore that to date Moody’s has not changed any of VTB’s ratings.