By John Helmer, Moscow
One of every ten dollars Alrosa is hoping to borrow from investors this month has been provisionally set aside to advertise Alrosa at the next three Olympic Games – London, Sochi, and Rio de Janeiro. This is the largest purse of Russian philanthropy, advertising, or giveaway ever publicly offered to western bond buyers to approve, and to fill.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
An order by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to extend the current ban on wheat, rye, barley and corn exports until July 1 next year — announced last week — will make an exception to allow Russian millers and traders to ship milled flour abroad. Allowing 1.4 tonnes of wheat to make one tonne of flour, the tonnage of wheat not allowed to be exported, which may be shipped as flour, may reach a million tonnes, triple the volume of the flour trade in the year before the drought.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Anonymous reports about Alisher Usmanov usually appear because he is selling or buying something, and wants to advertise his price. Or else they are there because Usmanov’s rivals and critics are at work. A report from London on Sunday that Usmanov is about to clinch a deal with the Japanese trader Mitsui is probably an advertorial.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
A year ago in Moscow, the Queensland state premier, an Australian Labor Party (ALP) politician named Anna Bligh, was threatened that if she didn’t give Oleg Deripaska what his United Company Rusal wanted from the state, he would punish the state treasury with the withdrawal of millions of dollars in bauxite mining royalties. Bligh has been doing her best to give him what he wants – and keep her deal secret.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Far Eastern Shipping Company (Fesco), which in Soviet days dominated dry-cargo shipping, has reported another loss in the first half of this year. What makes this news is that the red-ink line came in at $28.1 million; one-quarter of the loss reported for the six months to 2009 at $124.1 million.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Today the news comes to you from Homer, with Odysseus doing the talking: “We came to the land of the Kyklopes race, arrogant lawless beings who leave their livelihoods to the deathless gods and never use their own hands to sow or plough; yet with no sowing and no ploughing, the crops all grow for them–wheat and barley and grapes that yield wine from ample clusters, swelled by the showers of Zeus. They have no assemblies to debate in, they have no ancestral ordinances; they live in arching caves on the tops of high hills, and the head of each family heeds no other, but makes his own ordinances for wife and children.” The countryside is empty of men, because the Kyklopes (Cyclops) eat them.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
The owner of the stranded Russian cruise ship, Lyubov Orlova, has failed to meet a deadline this week for selling the vessel and paying its debts.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Sovcomflot (SCF), the state oil tanker company and currently the 5th energy shipper in the world, has made its first detailed public disclosure to investment markets in a multi-million dollar debt prospectus. Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, and VTB are the arrangers.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
The US Government has decided not to let Victor Vekselberg off so easily.
The US District Attorney for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan) has filed for an extension of time to allow the Justice Department in Washington to consider a detailed brief, arguing that Vekselberg should face the full force of the American racketeering statute. This is the start of an attempt by the government to override a ruling by three appeals court judges last month that whatever Vekselberg had done, for good or ill, was beyond the jurisdiction of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
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