{"id":58754,"date":"2025-09-12T04:26:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T04:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/58754\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T04:26:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T04:26:12","slug":"russia-plans-bankruptcy-moratorium-to-shield-struggling-steelmakers-kommersant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/58754\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia Plans Bankruptcy Moratorium to Shield Struggling Steelmakers \u2013 Kommersant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia\u2019s government is preparing a moratorium on bankruptcies in the metals sector to support heavily indebted companies hit by sanctions and high borrowing costs, the Kommersant business daily reported<\/a> Wednesday, citing draft measures by the economy and industry ministries.<\/p>\n

Analysts told the newspaper that the proposal is aimed primarily at coal and steel producer Mechel, which is controlled by Igor Zyuzin.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s debt exceeds 250 billion rubles ($2.9 billion), while its net loss in the first half of 2025 jumped 143% year-on-year to 40.5 billion rubles ($479 million), the worst result since 2015.<\/p>\n

The measure could also benefit metals and coke producer Industrial Metallurgical Holding (PMKh), whose parent company posted a first-half net loss of 9.79 billion rubles ($115.8 million), five times higher than a year earlier.<\/p>\n

Its debt nearly doubled year-on-year to 76.08 billion rubles ($900 million) by June 30.<\/p>\n

Severstal, which accounts for about 14% of Russia\u2019s steel output, has also sounded the alarm.<\/p>\n

CEO Alexander Shevelyov last week warned<\/a> of a crisis on a scale comparable to the 1990s, citing sanctions-related export restrictions and the Central Bank\u2019s prolonged period of high interest rates.<\/p>\n

Dmitry Orekhov, managing director at ratings agency NKR, told Kommersant that the moratorium was necessary to prevent systemically important companies from collapsing and triggering knock-on effects for the industry, the labor market and regional economies.<\/p>\n

He added that the effectiveness of state support would depend on whether it preserved production and jobs rather than propping up inefficient business models.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s steel output fell 1.5% last year despite demand from defense plants, according to state statistics service Rosstat. The downturn has since accelerated, with June production down 10.2% year-on-year.<\/p>\n

Steel exports have slumped by a third under sanctions, to 20 million tons in 2024 from 31 million in pre-war 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s government is preparing a moratorium on bankruptcies in the metals sector to support heavily indebted companies hit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[79,179,18,19,17,2804],"class_list":{"0":"post-58754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-metals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}