Investors will not be able to buy into the £182 million Liontrust Russia Fund or the £53 million JPM Emerging Europe Equity Fund. Both have high exposures to the state-owned Sberbank bank and to Rosneft and Gazprom, all of which have been hit by sanctions from western nations.
The Liontrust fund has all its assets invested in Russia and 60 per cent of the JP Morgan fund is in Russian stocks.
Liontrust said: “We have not taken this action lightly but we believe this is in the best interests of all investors given the events of the past few days. These events include the closure of the Moscow stock exchange and the temporary ban on foreign investors selling local Russian securities”. It was unable to say how long the fund would be suspended, but added that the suspension would be kept under continual review.
JP Morgan said that it’ s fund was suspended “in order to protect the interests of our shareholders”.
