By John Helmer, Moscow
Russia’s state pipeline company Transneft went public yesterday morning with an attack on the Prime Minister of Bulgaria for dragging his feet over the trans-Balkan pipeline proposed between Burgas and Alexandropouli, on the Aegean Sea. Transneft chief executive Nikolai Tokarev was reported by Moscow news wires as saying: “God save anyone from partners like our Bulgarian friends.”
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By John Helmer, Moscow
They said it could never be done, but Alexei Mordashov has done it!
Having failed to buy out the 27% Canadian minority shareholders in High River Gold (HRG), who refuse to sell at his price, Mordashov, owner of 73% of the shares, has hidden the annual general meeting where noone but he could find it – and where no shareholder could ask awkward questions. This first-ever hidden AGM has been arranged without audio or video or even telephone connection to the outside world, so that not even the investment institutions of London, who in February rejected Mordashov’s attempted initial public offering of Nord Gold shares, could listen in.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
The disclosures by disgruntled New York law enforcers in the US press today, revealing that the accusing chamber-maid in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) affair is a career liar with thousands of recent dollars in her bank account, puts an end to the trumped-up prosecution. Whether Strauss-Kahn returns to be President of France is up to him. President, oops Prime Minister Vladimir Putin turns out to be right once again.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Yesterday’s report on the Guinean President’s ultimatum to Rusal to use or lose the giant Dian-Dian bauxite deposit has drawn fresh sources with additional information, confirming the deterioration in Rusal’s hold on its concession agreement.
According to Vladislav Soloviev, Oleg Deripaska’s first deputy at Rusal headquarters in Moscow, his company is currently in talks with the Government of Guinea on terms for developing Dian-Dian. “We are ready to start to develop the deposit, but we need to solve the problems with infrastructure and agree on railroad use with the government,” Soloviev is reported as saying.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Now it’s official – the French, British, Americans, Chinese and Indians are all behind Guinean President Alpa Conde’s decision to revoke the Russian concession for the world’s largest unmined bauxite mining deposit, Dian-Dian, and hit the current concession holder, United Company Rusal, with back-tax and fraud claims, plus interest and penalties, for about $1 billion.
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I have long wanted to comment on the investment climate, which was discussed at the meeting of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin with the international railway elite, representatives of financial institutions and investment banks in the framework of the Forum 1520.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Two US banks named in May by Phosagro as mandated arrangers of its initial public offering (IPO) walked away from the share sale attempt after finding little interest among international investors to buy the shares from Phosagro’s owner, Andrei Guriev. The Americans also had problems with verifying how Guriev came into possession of the property he is selling — what one American bank source today calls “the shadow of Yukos”.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
If Phosagro, one of Russia’s leading phosphate miners and exporters, were a Mom and Pop store, the release this morning of the 441-page prospectus reveals that Mom Gurieva and Pop Guriev are selling a good part of the family jewels for cash. The only other seller of shares for the initial public offering (IPO) now under way in London is Maxim Volkov, 39, the chief executive since 2009; he is selling his entire 1% stake.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
When the gravy train to China starts running, it can be educational for investors in the greater Sino-Russian iron-ore market to slow down, and patiently study how Australians, rivals of the Russians and other iron-ore suppliers, behave when the brakes are off – and the regulators appear to be going in another direction.
Australia’s newest iron-ore miner to start shipping to China, BC Iron (ticker BCI:AU),ought to be seeing the benefit of larger announced reserves, more rail and port capacity to ship cargoes, and a freshly minted report from KPMG confirming that a fair valuation of the company’s prospects is a share price between A$3.80 to $4.13. That should be good news too for Ukrainian metals mogul, Gennady Bogolyubov, who is the largest single stakeholder in BCI, with 21%.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
In The Long Good-Bye, private detective Philip Marlowe says of the snob column in the newspapers, “I don’t read them often, only when I run out of things I dislike.” Some people feel that way about the weekly report from Emerging Portfolio Fund Research(EPFR). That is the Boston outfit which tracks the flow of investor funds into and out of emerging market destinations in the aggregate (GEM, EMEA), and in particular countries.
The bad news, out today in EPFR’s bulletin and Uralsib Bank’s weekly analysis, is that outflow of investor cash in Russian stocks and funds hit a record this week of $298 million. This was a big turnaround from the previous week’s positive inflow; though it makes just a small dent in the total flow inward to Russia since January 1 of $3.5 billion.
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