The holdings of Russia's wealthiest oligarchs lost up to $16 billion in value on Monday in the wake of Trump administration sanctions, NBC News reports.
Shares in sanctioned aluminum producer Rusal, which is controlled by the billionaire Oleg Deripaska, fell more than 50 percent on the Hong Kong stock exchange. NBC reported the ruble fell to its lowest value against the dollar since 2016.
The sanctions, announced Friday, freeze the U.S. assets of "oligarchs" such as Deripaska and lawmaker Suleiman Kerimov, whose family controls Russia's largest gold producer, Polyus.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian government will try to mitigate the effects of the sanctions. He called the sanctions package "egregious in its lawlessness."
NBC News reported:
Bloomberg reported that all but one of the 27 Russian tycoons on its Bloomberg Billionaires Index lost money on Monday. The biggest loser, it said, was nickel miner Vladimir Potanin, whose wealth fell by $2.25 billion.
In total, the net worth of Russia’s wealthiest people fell by $16 billion, according to Bloomberg. Forbes Russia said the value of tycoons on its own index fell by $12 billion.
Shares in Sberbank, one of Russia’s biggest banks and a barometer of its economic health, fell 17.3 percent.
However, some Russian business leaders remained upbeat. "I lost $250 million a day," Oleg Tinkov, founder and chair of the board of directors of Tinkoff Bank, told a business conference in Moscow on Tuesday. "But there have been worse days. I remember I lost a billion in a day. So, actually, it was a very positive day."
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedv ordered officials to research how to support companies experiencing massive losses due to the sanctions.
Officials say the sanctions are not due to a specific event but are a broad measure to punish Russia for "ongoing and increasingly malign activities in the world."