Carolyn Cohn and Tom Sims

FRANKFURT/LONDON – European bank shares rose Friday after falling steeply on Thursday, despite bankers grappling with sanctions after Russia’s invasion in Ukraine.

Stocks in the largest banks rose while European bank sector traded higher by 1.3%. This is just a partial rebound from Thursday’s 8% drop.

Officials were still working on details of the latest round of European sanctions, but they were not yet complete.

As part of the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell described it as the “hardest set of sanctions” ever implemented, Russia will be frozen assets and its banks blocked from European financial markets.

Ursula von der Leyen, chief of EU Commission, stated on Twitter that the package included financial sanctions targeting 70% Russian banks and key state-owned businesses, as well as defense.

The banks that have the greatest exposure to Russia suffered the largest losses on Thursday.

Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International was among those that fell, falling 23% and rising 4.1% on Friday. Societe

Generale lost 12% Thursday. However, it was up 0.1%.

There have been some investors who are hesitant about exposing themselves to Russia during the current crisis.

Andrew Formica was the Jupiter Fund Management’s chief executive. He said that he was “quite prudent” entering this situation.

We had our own screening of which businesses were most at risk from strong sanctions. That was an area we had considered and where we have been trying to minimize our exposure.