| | Shares in euro zone banks plunged on Thursday after Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and European Union officials said they would impose new sanctions on Russia. | | | Societe Generale said on Thursday that its Russian unit Rosbank continued to operate normally and that the French banking group was complying with "all applicable regulations". | | | Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Thursday said Russia has created enough safety tools to survive market volatility and said that the "emotional" financial market reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine would even out. | | | UniCredit's Russian unit has a "very liquid and self-funded" balance sheet and its impaired loan coverage is very high, Italy's second-biggest bank said on Thursday as the Ukraine crisis hit its shares. | | | JPMorgan has said it may have to review plans to start including Ukraine government bonds in it influential GBI-Emerging Markets index at the end of the next month amid the country's rapidly escalating crisis. | | | Austria's Raiffeisen Bank International said its banks in Russia and Ukraine are well-capitalised and self-financing, and that provisions were already made last year as part of its risk policy. | | | The European Union is unlikely at this stage to take steps to cut Russia off from the SWIFT global interbank payments system as it works on a new package of sanctions against Moscow for its action against Ukraine, several EU sources said. | | | The Russian central bank increased daily dollars offered via foreign exchange swap operations with banks to $5 billion from $3 billion, it said on Thursday, as Moscow ordered forces to invade Ukraine. | | | Britain's largest high street bank Lloyds posted a jump in annual profits on Thursday but was dented by further costs for past misdeeds, as the lender laid out a fresh strategy under new CEO Charlie Nunn. | | | Axa reported a profit on Thursday that more than doubled from last year, with the French insurer recovering from pandemic-related claims during the peak of the COVID-19 crisis. | | | | |