By John Helmer, Moscow

A group of South Africans, led by Tokyo Sexwale (image left), has devised a scheme to take over mineral assets and mining concessions in the west African republic of Guinea, which the government plans to renationalize after revoking deals struck by previous Guinean governments. The Sexwale scheme is a growing threat to Oleg Deripaska’s Rusal in Guinea, as the offers Deripaska (image right) has proposed to Guinean President Alpha Conde and his family miss their mark.

On the eve of Rusal’s annual general meeting of shareholders in Hong Kong, due on June 15, there has been no fresh warning to Rusal shareholders that their Guinean bauxite mines and alumina refinery are facing confiscation, and transfer to a state mining company controlled, indirectly, by the South Africans. These Guinean assets account for more than half of Rusal’s global bauxite reserves. On last year’s production results, the Guinea assets represent 36% of Rusal’s annual bauxite production of 13.5 million tonnes; 7% of Rusal’s alumina output of 8.2 million tonnes. Both totals were down below past-year volumes.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, June 13th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In the short run, possibly for three quarters of this year, BP, run by chief executive Bob Dudley, will be short of its half-billion dollar quarterly cash dividend from TNK-BP. In the long run, whether Mikhail Fridman and his partners sell their 50% stake in TNK-BP to BP or to another Russian oil company, BP is on the skids, either out of Russia entirely, or remaining on terms that will give a Russian stakeholder new power over BP’s main shareholding – potentially the single largest stake in BP.

This is definitely not the understanding you would form if you read the Anglo-American press. The spoon-fed correspondent at the Financial Times quoted “one person close to the company” (BP) as claiming that the Russians had been “wrongfooted by BP’s decision to pursue a sale.” The Telegraph reports Dudley’s tactic is to “smoke out the troublesome oligarchs who are proving impossible to work with – to make them cooperate or sell their stake to a more compliant bedfellow.” The Wall Street Journal thinks Dudley is playing the card game of Mississippi Stud, in which “players have three opportunities to raise the stakes, or fold and walk away… Upping the ante a third time might be a winning strategy in poker. But in Russia they favor a different, and much more dangerous game of chance.”
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, June 12th, 2012
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by John Helmer - Sunday, June 10th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The first international trade dispute involving Russian exports to be tabled since Russia was accepted in the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a claim by a US steelmaker that Alexei Mordashov’s Severstal is dumping hot-rolled steel products in the US market at a price below the domestic American price. That at least is the allegation of Nucor and its Washington lawyer, Alan Price, who has sharp words for what he calls Severstal propaganda.

Price is publicly forecasting penalty import duties against several categories of hot-rolled steel from Russia of between 78% and 180%. Enough to kill the trade, which last year generated 5.7 million tonnes of Russian exports to the US, worth $3.8 billion, according to Russian customs figures.
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by John Helmer - Sunday, June 10th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The Kremlin has not decided yet how it should privatize Alrosa, according to official disclosures at yesterday’s cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. The kickback, I mean kickoff of the diamond privatization worth at least $14 billion remains out of reach for the time being.
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by John Helmer - Friday, June 8th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The greatest Canadian whom the Russians have ever known was Glenn Gould, the pianist. But when he played in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1957 – over the strenuous objections, even threats from the Canadian and US governments – he didn’t take his chair with him. That special chair, on which Gould played until his retirement from the concert hall, was this week presented to Canada’s National Arts Centre in Ottawa, together with Gould’s Steinway CD 318. The piano will be played in a first new recital on June 20. The chair will not be sat on for performance except for even more special occasions.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, June 7th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

A three-judge appeals court panel in Chelyabinsk this morning preserved the injunction against Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine (MMK) completing its takeover of Australian iron-ore miner, Flinders Mines.

Today’s proceedings were a continuation of the May 30 hearing in Appeal Court no. 18 of the Chelyabinsk Arbitrazh Court, when Judge Galina Fedina, accompanied by judges Irina Sokolova and Svetlana Ershova, postponed consideration of parallel appeals submitted by MMK and Flinders Mines. Lawyers for the Australian company submitted additional materials on June 1, according to a notice on the court website.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, June 5th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

What an enterprising lad! While Highland Gold, a London-listed public stockholding company, was looking in a forward direction, last Friday Roman Abramovich sold it a gold and silver prospect called Klen for the greater part of which he had paid $103,774 eighteen months earlier. Abramovich has now relieved Highland Gold of $69 million of its hard-earned money for this exchange. In the interval, since Abramovich spent peanuts on prospecting , his rate of return was 34% per month, 610% overall.

This, at least, is one arithmetic of what has happened. Abramovich’s spokesman, John Mann, says there is another truer one, although one of the crucial numbers in that calculation is missing. Highland Gold’s spokesman, Dmitry Yakushkin, isn’t providing that number. Nor is he explaining how Highland Gold counts the reserves and resources which Abramovich has just sold it.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, June 5th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

If President Vladimir Putin is intending to demonstrate he has already lost control of the newly appointed government and their oligarch business partners, then in the proposal of Suleiman Kerimov to expand Alrosa’s asset base by buying BHP’s diamond mines in Canada, and privatize 51% of the company in a public share offering, he has his chance. And who better to address this problem (opportunity) than the First Deputy Prime Minister, Igor Shuvalov?

Kerimov made his proposal on May 14 in Vedomosti, and followed with an unprecedented acknowledgement by his spokesman in Bloomberg. In the Vedomosti report, Alrosa sources were reported to have said that last year Kerimov had asked Alexei Kudrin, then finance minister and chairman of Alrosa’s supervisory board, to endorse a deal in which a 51% state shareholding in Alrosa would be put up for sale. Kerimov reportedly told Kudrin also that the international marketability and value of the Alrosa shares should be supplemented by adding diamond mines in Canada which BHP is offering for sale at an initially reported price of about $750 million. Naturally, Kerimov added, his friends at VTB, one of Russia’s state banks, would be happy to lend whatever BHP wanted for the deal.
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by John Helmer - Friday, June 1st, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In the jungle there’s not much call for the subtle touch. So it’s not clear whether Mikhail Fridman’s announcements this week are intended as a dagger or as a club.

By resigning his chairmanship of the management board of TNK-BP, and vacating the chief executive’s role, Fridman (image centre left) hasn’t left the governing board of directors of TNK-BP, the joint venture between BP and Fridman and his partners, German Khan (image centre), Len Blavatnik, and Victor Vekselberg (centre right); the latter combine in a group named AAR after each of the initials of their holdings – Alfa, Access, Renova.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, May 31st, 2012
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