By John Helmer, Moscow
A website property sales agency, calling itself “specialized in urgent and forced sales of Luxury Properties, Super Cars & Yachts”, is offering Suleiman Kerimov’s holiday residence at Medy Roc, at Cap d’Antibes on the French coast. The sale notice is dated October 20, last week. A number of notable Russian-owned properties on the Cote d’Azur have been sold since the crash of 2008, but this is the first oligarch-sized disposal.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Alrosa revealed this week that it has suffered a setback in the management’s plan to sell up to 20% of the company’s state-owned shares in an initial public offering (IPO).
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By John Helmer, Moscow
A Canadian Supreme Court judge has ruled that Alexei Mordashov rode roughshod over the rights of minority shareholders in Crew Gold, when Mordashov’s gold group completed its takeover of Crew Gold, and paid $4.65 per share to buy up minority shareholders.
Justice Ronald Veale, the senior judge of the Supreme Court of Yukon, the Canadian province where Nord Gold, the Canadian vehicle used to absorb Crew Gold is registered, issued a judgement on October 14. He ruled that a group of Norwegian minority shareholders, led by Jostein Matre, had been unfairly and improperly deprived of their rights to dissent from the buy-out offer.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
In the long history of English justice, it has happened before that candidates for the seats of the highest court in land have been obliged to rehearse their talents and qualifications before the monarch on his throne (aka the Crown). And not only their qualifications, technical and professional, but also their willingness to do the monarch’s bidding. If not for that, Crown courtiers have been known to intimate, the seat on offer might be pulled and presented to another arse.
In time of invasion threats, wars of religion, wars between king and barons, civil war between king and parliament, and conflicts between the lower house of parliament and upper, ambitious Englishmen who hoped to be high judges understood how to comport themselves in front of those more powerful than them, and on whom they depended.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Renco and its subsidiary RG Steel, the defendants in Severstal’s New York court claim, have a month to file their reply, and for the time being they are saying nothing. Bette Kovach, spokesman for RG Steel, and Andrew Shea, spokesman for Renco, say they “will not comment on matters in litigation.” Nor will they answer whether it is Renco’s position that the March 2011 takeover terms for the three US steelmills did not obligate Renco and RG Steel to make a cash payment of $125 million to Severstal without agreement on subsequent accounting and valuation adjustments, and post-deal due diligence.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Severstal has issued a claim in US Federal Court (Manhattan Southern District) against RG Steel, a unit of the private American steelmaking group, Renco. Severstal owner Alexei Mordashov (left image) wants it to be known in the Russian media that he thinks he’s been stiffed. But he doesn’t want anyone to read too carefully into the court papers in case they detect evidence of Severstal accounting…. well, let’s not say fraud until and unless the US court rules on the matter.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Fitch Ratings issued a modified warning on Sovcomflot this week, claiming that the big Russian’s tanker revenues were at risk of coming up short against the company’s obligations. In that event, Fitch London analyst Jeannine Arnold reports, Sovcomflot may have to sell off the hulls and newbuildings which are on order, but still on the shipyard slips in South Korea, China, and Finland.
Fitch is also acknowledging that the release of its new ratings report was delayed by several days, and that the ratings agency analysts have come under the pressure of persuasion from Sovcomflot to change their recommended rating.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
When crisis strikes the global steel sector, sales revenues drop faster than costs, and earnings and profits shrink. The normal correction is for mill owners to cut their costs by reducing production, closing furnaces, furloughing workers, trimming supply of steel into the marketplace, cutting product prices to clear unsold inventories, and crossing fingers for an improvement of demand. If they can help it, the proprietors of steelmills don’t normally lift their interest expenses by raising debt loads.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
The Russian government has made good on an earlier threat to penalize grain exports if the export tonnage exceeds the level that threatens domestic supplies and triggers grain and bread price increases before the December parliamentary elections. Fear of bread price rises detonating voter discontent first appeared a year ago, when the Kremlin’s front-line defence at the time was an embargo on all grain exports until the new harvest was in.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Now for those who think the appetite for due diligence and accountability deadens the taste for opportunity, the good news from the Russian goldmines comes today from Alfa Bank’s metals analyst Barry Ehrlich, in a set of three fine reports.
The global supply and demand balance for gold is stable: the gap between under-supply and expanding demand is closing, compared to 2010, but supply growth appears to running at 3% per annum, and demand growth at 5% per annum. If that’s right, the gold price will be secured by the increase in jewellery and bullion buying in China and India, and by government stockpiling of gold worldwide, as a hedge against volatile currency movements.
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