By John Helmer, Moscow

When money is at risk, open stock markets generally insist on openness, although there are murky exceptions, especially in Canada.

It also turns out that business secrets are much harder to keep in the Russian market than elsewhere. That’s one reason the Russian risk discount is so high: the ability of Russian stakeholders to conceal material facts of asset value and title, related party transactions, and tax, transfer price and other administrative sanctions is far weaker than you will find in the developed stock exchanges or even in other emerging markets.
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by John Helmer - Friday, June 17th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In Mother Goose’s original nursery rhyme, the trio at sea got there by jumping out of a rotten potato. Mother G. also didn’t rate highly their options for surviving at sea. But that’s kids’ stuff.

Buying shares in Russian transportation companies – rail, shipping, ports, containers – is a grown-up bet on the growth of the Russian economy. If gross domestic product (GDP), crude oil prices, real and disposable income are all rising, then it’s likely that moving container-loads of goods inward to feed consumer demand will also grow. Terminals to unload and load the boxes should prosper. That, at least, is what Russian port promoters would have you believe. On current prospects, with first-quarter GDP growth at 4.1%, crude oil up by 24% (Urals, year to date), and imports surging 41% over last year, investors don’t have to be gulled.
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by John Helmer - Friday, June 17th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In European folklore, will-o’-the-wisps are lambent flames seen flickering over bogs and fens, and known by many different names and stories. Usually explicable as methane igniting, in some Baltic mythologies the will-o’-the-wisp is believed to signal buried treasure. In others, the ignition is believed to be the trick of a mendacious imp intent on leading unwary travellers to misfortune.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, June 16th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

It’s impossible to celebrate independence of oneself. It is possible to take leave of your senses.

День России, Russia Day, for which Russians take off today, is one of those cynical inventions for which Boris Yeltsin was responsible. It was on June 12, 1990, when, manipulating his control of the Russian republic parliament, Yeltsin declared Russia’s sovereignty from the Soviet Union, i.e, the start of his destruction of Mikhail Gorbachev, and almost everything else. A triumph of meretriciousness over sanctimony. In time, the insecurity from which the one seemed to be offering liberation from the other will deserve a different quality of relief – and apter memorial.
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by John Helmer - Monday, June 13th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In just a few hours this week, Rusal’s share price collapsed as a Bloomberg report confirmed what the stock markets have been suspecting for some time now – one of Rusal’s anchor shareholders might need cash so badly, he wants to sell his shares. According to Bloomberg, the requirement for quick cash comes to between $1.5 billion and $2 billion. That represents a sell-off of between 7% and 10% of Rusal’s 1.5 billion shares. On this news, published on Monday and Tuesday, the share price lost more than 10% of its value, dropping below last year’s IPO price of HK$10.80 to the lowest level this year.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, June 9th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Russia’s price watchdog, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), has announced that on its own initiative, it has opened a case against Novolipetsk Metallurgical Combine (NLMK) and its subsidiary, VIZ-Stal, charging that electric steel produced by the two mills has been priced in violation of Article 10 of the Competition Law of 2006. This article covers “prohibition of abuse of dominant position by an economic entity”. The provision charged in this case is Art 10, sect 1: “the establishment and maintaining of monopolistically high or monopolistically low price for a commodity.”
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, June 8th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

When one of the cleverest of international business intelligence agents retires from the secret world to write thrillers for a well-known London publisher, there are bound to be many in Moscow who are curious to know what he chooses to reveal about Russia’s oligarchs, their business practices and personal habits. If you leave out the long-legged Russian beauties yearning to unbutton themselves, and the fresh bloodspatter from the corpses of reporters, traders and lawyers eliminated for knowing too much, what conclusions does he draw from this phase of Russia’s history?
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, June 7th, 2011
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In an apparently unscripted exchange with reporters in Kursk last Thursday, Mikhail Prokhorov corrected the earlier impression he had given a fortnight before that, if elected by Russian voters in December at the head of the Right Cause party, he may not take his seat in parliament.

However, the garble reported by Interfax adds to the unbelievability of Prokhorov’s first national election campaign even before the party’s convention has selected him; or the first public opinion poll has been taken with Russian voters.
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by John Helmer - Monday, June 6th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

A fleet of between 200 and 1,000 vessels will be required to carry newly released Russian wheat and other grains to markets in the Mediterranean and East Asia, grain traders and port sources have told Fairplay, in the wake of the May 28 order from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Putin stole the thunder of other officials, announcing that the grain export embargo, due for extension or termination next month, will be lifted, and exports resume from July 1.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, June 2nd, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Gennady Onishchenko, the Russian government’s chief food inspector and head of the federal inspection agency Rospotrebnadzor, has ordered a ban on imports of vegetables, announcing: “we urge the population not to buy fresh vegetables from Germany and Spain. Buy Russian production.”

But this time the notorious protectionist of Russian farm, food and wine producers hasn’t gone too far. Instead, a spate of international reports claiming that in addition to cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce, Onishchenko has also stopped imported fruits turns out to be mistaken.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, June 1st, 2011
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