To protect creditors, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (Finma) has ordered measures be put into place deferring Sberbank's (Switzerland) obligations from deposits, according to a statement Tuesday from Finma. 

Additionally, the bank is prohibited from making payments or transactions not directly necessary for its operations as a bank. For its part, Sberbank will not seek new business and is now restructuring and reducing business activity.

Financial Stability

To monitor the financial stability of Sberbank and ensure equal treatment of creditors, Finma is appointing an investigating agent who will also make sure a proper organizational structure is in place at the institution.

Because of the situation in Ukraine, Finma said it is in contact with exposed institutions it supervises and requests information regularly. 

 Sberbank (Switzerland) AG is an indirect subsidiary of Russia's Sberbank and has no direct connection to SberBank Europe AG. The bank specializes in commodity trade finance, serving roughly seventy business clients, but has no retail business. 

Finma said it will continue to monitor the bank closely and will not communicate any further details.