BANKING

Russian Banks to Manage State-Owned Shares: President Boris N. Yeltsin signed a decree allowing commercial banks to manage and eventually sell state-owned shares in exchange for loans to the government. Under the multimillion-dollar scheme, first touted in April, banks will have to bid openly for the right to manage under trust specific blocks of state-owned shares in major companies, First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly B. Chubais said. Chubais said companies whose shares will be put into the scheme will include major Russian oil groups, the cream of the hundreds of companies in which the state still owns a stake. Banks managing the shares would have the right to sell them when the management period was over.