In what seems a bad sign for Russia's fund management industry, Pioneer is pulling out and making redundancies

Last year ended badly for Russia's fund managers. In the last eight weeks of 2011, $650m was allegedly cashed out of Russian funds. More recently, however, things had been looking up: international investors increased their investments in Russia during January according to UralSib and Troika Dialog. Chris Weafer, a strategist at Troika Dialog, said the country was benefiting from inflows as international investors sought to increase their exposure to emerging markets.

And yet, it emerged today that Pioneer Global Asset Management, owned by the Italian bank Unicredit, is pulling out of Russia whilst expanding in both Asia and the US, where it is making a "significant investment over the net five years to hire additional investment talent."

Does this mean Russia is no longer seen as a growth market for international fund management firms? Maybe. At the very least, international money managers are unlikely to hire additional Russian talent until after the elections in March. Many are likely to be wary - as Anton Rakhmanov, Troika's director of asset management, pointed out last September:“We've been in existence for 15 years and had two crises."