The Financial Times reports that the freeze on depositor withdrawals at Russian bank Globex is leading to high levels of withdrawals at other Russian banks, which doesn’t qualify as being a run…..yet.

From the Financial Times (hat tip reader Michael):

Globex on Wednesday banned depositors from withdrawing their money as confidence in the Russian banking system began to show signs of evaporating. Globex, a mid-sized retail bank with assets of $4bn (€2.95bn, £2.32bn), is the first Russian bank to experience a run on deposits during the crisis. It lost 13 per cent of its deposits last month, according to Maxim Raskosnov, an analyst at Renaissance capital, and a further 15 per cent this month according to Emilya Alieva, Globex’s vice-president. At least a dozen other Russian banks have reported a sharp rise in withdrawals and account closures. An economist with a leading western bank in Moscow said Globex was probably the first in what could be a number of bank panics, if the government did not take concerted action soon. “I think there are a large number of small and medium sized banks that are in the same situation,” she said. Despite a Kremlin promise of $200bn in relief funds – $87bn this week – the fall-out of a stock market plunge and the global credit crunch appears to be worse than anticipated, analysts say. So far, the crunch has not affected the living standards of ordinary Russians, but a rash of bank failures could. Banks across Russia have faced a rise in outflows as depositors have begun to lose trust in all but the biggest state banks, VTB and Sberbank, which have received most of the government’s liquidity support. Tatyana Sadovskaya, the director of a branch of Khnati Mansisk Bank in the city of Nizhnevartovsk, on Wednesday told Interfax news agency that in response to rumours of her bank’s insolvency: “People have formed long lines at cashiers and at bankomats, people are taking their deposits and closing their accounts.”

From a later FT article “The East is in the red“: