By John Helmer in Moscow The owner of the stranded Russian cruise ship, Lyubov Orlova, has failed to meet a deadline this week for selling the vessel and paying its debts.

by John Helmer - Wednesday, October 20th, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow Sovcomflot (SCF), the state oil tanker company and currently the 5th energy shipper in the world, has made its first detailed public disclosure to investment markets in a multi-million dollar debt prospectus. Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, and VTB are the arrangers.

by John Helmer - Monday, October 18th, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow The Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador has ordered the arrest of the Russian-owned cruise vessel, Lyubov Orlova, after the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) filed suit last week on behalf of the crew. The 49 Russian and 2 Ukrainian mariners have been stranded on the vessel at the port […]

by John Helmer - Monday, October 11th, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow “Never apologize and never explain. It’s a sign of weakness”. That line comes from a 1949 film called “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”. In that one, John Wayne played a cavalry commander on the verge of retirement who tries to beat his Cheyenne foes one more time. He fails at […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, October 6th, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow The arrest for debt of MV Lyubov Orlova, an Arctic and Antarctic cruise ship almost as famous as her namesake, a Soviet movie star, continues to mystify industry sources in Moscow. That is because noone is owning up to owning the vessel, and thus to responsibility for the court-ordered seizure […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, October 5th, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow Russia’s ports used to be run by gangsters, because it was one of the easier assets in post-Communist Russia to control by simple violence. The history of the International Longshoremen in the US and Jimmy Hoffa’s Teamsters make this feature of port life unexceptional the world over.

by John Helmer - Thursday, September 16th, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow The federal Ministry of Finance has moved the planned privatization for the state shipping company Sovcomflot into next year; increased the bloc of shares to be offered from 20% previously announced to 25%; and put a discount on the target value for the sell-off.

by John Helmer - Thursday, July 29th, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow After selling out of its container business, the Far Eastern Shipping Company (Fesco), owned by Sergei Generalov (right image), has announced it is taking an August time-out, and will return in September with an announcement of its “near-term strategy”. It isn’t known where Generalov will take his holiday, but if […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow It has become the biggest tussle over a shipyard contract ever fought out in public in Russia. Roman Trotsenko, chief executive of the state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC), told Fairplay today that negotiations are under way for USC to buy the designs, shipboard technology, and production licences for the building […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, July 15th, 2010
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By John Helmer in Moscow In the history of Russia it has never happened before that the oligarchs would take on the military establishment in a tug of war over billion-dollar assets. This couldn’t have happened in the past, because asset power and military strength were the same thing — boyars were warlords. Or else […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, July 11th, 2010
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