Another 6 years of Putin could be bad news for the rouble

Moscow

FOR one of the rouble's most prescient forecasters, six more years of Vladimir Putin will mean that the currency's back-to-back annual gains are about to hit the buffers.

"After the Russian presidential election, the market will have digested the story of Russia exiting recession," said Sebastien Barbe, the Paris-based head of emerging market research and strategy at Credit Agricole CIB. Traders will turn their attention to "the difficulty that Putin - as the old-new president - will face in upgrading the growth model", he said.