Russia's Tinkoff cancels dollar Eurobond interest payment after EU sanctions

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian online bank Tinkoff has cancelled interest payments due later this month on a dollar-denominated Eurobond, days after being targeted with Western sanctions, the lender's Eurobond issuer said.

Tinkoff, owned by TCS Group Holding, was included in the EU's tenth package of sanctions against Russia outlined last week following Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine. It has already been forced to suspend some trading in euros and had its app removed from the App Store.

The Eurobond issuer, TCS Finance D.A.S, which is also part of the TCS group, said it was notified on March 3 that Tinkoff had cancelled the payment of interest, due on March 15, accrued on a $300 million perpetual bond.

The issuer said interest on March 15 would be automatically cancelled as a result.

It added that noteholders would be deemed to "irrevocably waive their right to receive, and no longer have any rights against the issuer or any other party with respect to payment of the March 2023 interest".

Tinkoff said the bond's documentation allowed for the issuer to cancel coupon payments.

"In the current circumstances, we have decided to cancel one payment in order to carry out additional work to take into account the interests of all investors, including those outside Russia," Tinkoff said in response to a request for comment.

Founded as a specialist credit card provider by entrepreneur Oleg Tinkov, now an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, Tinkoff has grown rapidly over the last decade and is listed as one of the central bank's 13 systemically important financial institutions in Russia.

(Reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya and Alexander Marrow; editing by Jan Harvey and Jason Neely)