By John Helmer, Moscow
Alexei Mordashov, owner of the Severstal steelmaking and mining group (lapel button), has instructed the executives in his goldmining arm Nord Gold to prepare for another shot at selling their shares at an initial public offering (IPO) in London before Christmas.
He’s also told them that the sooner they can buy out the Canadian minority shareholders of High River Gold (HRG:CN), the sooner the IPO can go to market – and the sooner they can earn their bonuses.
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| Question: Candidates for the post of the IMF managing director are now being discussed. Whom would you support? And what is your attitude towards the scandal surrounding Dominique Strauss-Kahn? Was he framed for political reasons? (more…) |
By John Helmer, Moscow
Mikhail Prokhorov’s last attempt but one to gather popularity among Russians was the idea that they should be compelled to work harder each hour and for up to 60 hours per week. That doesn’t sound like an election clincher anywhere in the known world, does it?.
Prokhorov’s last attempt but two was what he calls the “remodelling” of the term snob, to sell a social network site and magazine in Russia, and then to make the product international, or at least northeast American. The person who edits this product described its popularity this way: “something that fills the space between politics and movie reviews — sex, food, children, urban issues.” Launched last September, the product has reportedly won the advertising vote of Maserati, Christie’s art auction house, the New Yorker, and Lufthansa.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Oleg Deripaska has been losing ground to Russian rivals in Mongolia, and is facing unprecedented administrative sanctions in Ukraine and Russia. The commercial effect is to force upwards the cost line on his balance-sheets, squeezing the earnings from which he must pay his debts and shareholder dividends. The political effect is to undercut the perception that Deripaska and his allies are too tough to resist.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
South African James Nieuwenhuys has taken over as chief operating officer of Moscow-based Polyus Gold, Russia’s largest goldminer. The mining company, owned in roughly equal parts by Mikhail Prokhorov and Suleiman Kerimov, has been unsuccessful in months of effort to find a major international mining company to partner, or to take over and buy the oligarchs out.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Oleg Deripaska (right), the chief executive of United Company Rusal, not only persuaded Muammar Qaddafi and his son, Saif al-Qaddafi (left), to invest in Rusal shares to support the company’s listing in Hong Kong last year. It now appears the Libyans also bought a stake in Norilsk Nickel to assist Deripaska in his hostile takeover bid against Norilsk Nickel, which is controlled by Vladimir Potanin and the Russian government.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Alrosa’s chief executive Fyodor Andreyev has announced that the state-owned diamond monopoly of Russia holds diamond reserves of 1.23 billion carats. Calculated according to the Russian mineral reserves classification, he said that 1.014 billion carats are proven, 211 million carats are probable.
The new numbers were mentioned in a briefing for Russian reporters, and are not an official statement of reserves. Two Moscow business newspapers reported what Andreyev said. Andreyev’s spokesman said this is the official release of the reserves.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Suleiman Kerimov has applied to the Prosecutor-General in Moscow with a request for an investigation of allegations that he was at one time involved in money-moving operations of Hassan Ali Khan, an Indian hawaladar. Breaking the silence of his spokesmen at the Federation Council, where Kerimov is a senator representing his native Dagestan, and at the Moscow office of his Nafta Moskva holding, Kerimov’s New York spokesman, Eliot Lauer, has announced:
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By John Helmer, Moscow
It is quite legal to play lowball, the variant of poker in which the lowest value of the cards you hold in your hand wins over higher values in the hands of the other players. It is less legal in the retail market if a sale is offered at a lower price, and after buyers appear to make their commitments, the price is raised. That’s also called bait-and-switch.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Dominique Strauss-Kahn — the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and if he is acquitted on sex crime charges, the front-runner to be the next President of France — has yet to speak in his defence, and respond to the indictment lodged in Manhattan Criminal Court last week.
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