By John Helmer in Moscow When it comes to the heroics of the free press, London reporters and their proprietors prefer to tell of chests bared and bloody corpses on foreign streets, preferably in places designated by Her Majesty’s Secret Service as enemy country. Moscow, for example. In the City of London, by contrast, the […]

by John Helmer - Monday, January 26th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow Before the global collapse of mine commodities and mining equities in the autumn of 2008, Mineweb, the Johannesburg-based mining publication, suffered a meltdown in asset valuation. Then, in July 2008, it incurred the worst cash loss in the publication’s history. The publisher and editor-in-chief of Mineweb is Alec Hogg. With […]

by John Helmer - Monday, December 29th, 2008
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By John Helmer in Moscow A Russian government effort to end special lobbying by major company shareholders, chief executives, sector cabinet ministers, and regional governors has either just ended; or else it has failed, because there isn’t enough government cash or credit for to satisfy everyone, and the political cost of saying no to some […]

by John Helmer - Friday, December 26th, 2008
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by John Helmer - Monday, December 22nd, 2008
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By John Helmer in Moscow In theory, Russia’s economic performance is correlated with global supply and demand for mined materials and commodities, and thus with the rate of global economic growth, especially China. In the Russian market, 80% of earnings come from commodity stocks. Before the collapse, the enormous gains in market capitalization of Russian […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008
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By John Helmer in Moscow Novlipetsk Metallurgical Company (NLMK), the third ranked Russian steelmaker owned by Vladimir Lisin, is considering whether to cancel two recently announced US acquisitions — John Macneely Corporation (JMC) and Beta Steel. JMC was purchased for $3.54 billion in August; Beta Steel for $400 million in September. The deals are not […]

by John Helmer - Monday, October 20th, 2008
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Delay and new cost conditions may persuade De Beers to abandon the Grib pipe By John Helmer in Moscow Unclear conditions set for De Beers’ s new Archangelsk region diamond project, and unexplained delays by the Russian government in communicating them, are likely to trigger the cancellation of the $172 million fund-raising, held last June […]

by John Helmer - Monday, October 20th, 2008
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By John Helmer in Moscow The first sign of a Russian economic crisis is a line of desperate people, pushing and shoving outside a locked door, on which a scribbled sign has been posted indicating that the cash those outside thought they owned would be unavailable until further notice. In the classic Soviet tradition, a […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
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By John Helmer in Moscow Norilsk Nickel investigation of asset spinoff leads to questioning of shareholder intention Mikhail Prokhorov’s holding company, Onexim, has officially confirmed that Mikhail Prokhorov will not proceed with the asset division agreement he signed on September 14 with former partner, Vladimir Potanin. A statement issued to Mineweb by the holding’s chief […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
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By John Helmer in Moscow Oleg Deripaska is not having a good week. On Monday, he revealed he was at maximum stretch to garner just enough shareholder votes for two seats on the Norilsk Nickel board, plus a seat for his highly unpredictable and unreliable shareholding ally, Mikhail Prokhorov. On Thursday, Justice Christopher Clarke issued […]

by Editor - Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
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