Trumps America imposes harsh sanctions on Russia

Donald Trump has announced harsh sanctions against Russia in the wake of alleged global allegations

Donald Trumps administration has come down hard on perceived friends and allies of the Russian state, with new sanctions on Russian oligarchs and high ranking government officials wiping over $13 billion off the price of affected companies. The Rouble also suffered its biggest drop in one day in over 3 years, with the major Russian index free falling and at the same time institutional investors offloading stock in businesses controlled by Oleg Deripaska, who saw 50% of his business wiped off in one day in HK exchanges.

Rusal, which is the alloy producer owned by Deripaska, saw a 50% loss in value overnight in Hong Kong, and over 40% was lost on the UK (London) exchanges when institutional investors got spooked by the events (sanctions and as yet undetermined consquences) and started offloading their stock.

The Rouble, dipped again by almost 5% before regaining some of its previous position and rising to trade at 60.42/$ earlier this week, which is almost 4% down, marking its biggest daily % drop since January in 2015.

Mr Deripaska is stated by Forbes.com to have a net worth of over $6.5 billion and is a close confidante of Mr Putin. He has been recorded as saying that his own business interests are so entwined that they cannot be separated from the interests of the Russian state. The Robert Mueller investigation in to Russian toying with the US election has Mr Deripaska listed due to his connections to Paul Manafort, who is Trumps former chairman for his election campaign.

The Russian government has retaliated with Dmitry Medvedev, the Prime Minister stating there would be retaliatory steps. He stated the sanctions imposed by the USA were illegal and unacceptable and has also stated the Russian government would help the companies affected.