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By John Helmer, Moscow Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine (MMK), a publicly listed shareholding company controlled by Victor Rashnikov, says that in the first two months of this year, it has not cut back on production of steel. “Everything is fine and we now have growth,” Yelena Evstigneyeva, MMK’s spokesman told CRU Steel News. She was responding […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Oleg Deripaska’s courtroom defence against the multi-billion dollar claim by his former patron and business partner, Mikhail Chernoy (Michael Cherney) collapsed into lawyer malfeasance and retraction of charges in federal US district court in New York last week. A leak to the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post, published on March 26, […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Now we move on from the lesson of how to be victorious over big people and bullies when still small —that’s for getting through the daytimes with ВЛАДИМИР ВИЗАНТИЙСКИЙ – to the lesson of how to write a short sentence and say everything that must be said at the same time. […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow If Russia’s Agriculture Minister, Elena Skrynnik, went to the trouble last week of decrying adulteration of Russia’s milk, then one thing is certain – the Franco-American syndicate which sells most of Russia’s milk and dominates the market is having trouble pricing down or buying up milk producers in the regions where […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Valued correspondent (aka Boris Bear) has written in to point out an odd typo which crept into the texts of two recent stories involving Victor Vekselberg and Len Blavatnik. They are the two shareholding partners of United Company Rusal, with a 15.8% stake between them, who appear to have uncovered cooking […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Commanders of empires like the French, British, American and Russian suffer from an identical blind spot. They all believe their power (arms, cash) is or should be great enough to destroy their adversaries decisively, totally, so that they can’t get up to fight again. The Americans lost the Vietnam war, as […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow BC Iron is a small but promising iron-ore miner from Western Australia, which is China’s mineral supply province and rival of Russian suppliers to China. The company is now testing the share price at which it was the target of an abortive takeover attempt a year ago. The bidder at that […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Alrosa has announced that the privatization plan for sale of its shares on the open market should be restricted in order to preserve government control of the company. The announcement was released Friday after a meeting of the Supervisory Board, Alrosa’s board of directors. Now why exactly would this group of […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Ahead of the March 16 election of a new board chairman for United Company Rusal, President-elect Vladimir Putin did something that isn’t widely known; has never happened before; and has not been disclosed by Rusal. The story of what happened in the run-up to the board vote can be read here. […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Barry Cheung (second left), the new board chairman of United Company Rusal and the first non-Russian chairman of a Russian monopoly, is viewed by his countrymen and business peers as a technocrat, a politician, and a businessman, in that order. The one business he reports in the curriculum vitae released by […]