By John Helmer in Moscow
Russian public companies are special, and public shareholders are the last to know. But when Suleiman Kerimov is engaged in a deal, you can be certain of knowing one thing — nothing is what it seems. The brokerages egging the market on today to buy Uralkali shares at a premium, on the ground that Kerimov has just done so, are misled. The controlling shareholder of Uralkali has just been obliged to sell at a discount.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Russian dockers at St Petersburg and Tuapse are threatening to strike unless the stevedore and port companies employing them accept inflation indexation of their salaries, which is provided by Russia’s labour law, but is not included in their current work contracts. The threat is aimed at Russia’s richest individual, the oligarch Vladimir Lisin (right image).
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By John Helmer in Moscow
The treasure cave which the legendary Ali Baba found is not known to have had a back-door.
Otherwise, when it happened that Ali’s greedy brother Qassim forgot the ‘Open Sesame!’ for the entrance, he’d have been able to safely escape the arrival of the forty thieves. Instead, Qassim was discovered, and cut into four pieces.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
On Thursday evening in Conakry, the capital of the west African republic of Guinea, presidential advisor Mamadou Conde was dismissed, after he was found to have been involved in a plan to sign over bauxite concession rights to the Russian aluminium monopoly Rusal, and arrange for acting Guinean President Sekouba Konate to endorse the scheme on this week’s planned Moscow trip.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Sergei Pugachev, the owner of Northern Shipyard and Baltic Plant, two leading St. Petersburg yards, is closing a deal to sell the properties to the state, following pressure from creditors on Pugachev’s holding, United Industrial Corporation (OPB), and its associated bank, International Industrial Bank (IIB).
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By John Helmer in Moscow
A bold move by two of Russia’s largest companies to fly General Sékouba Konaté, the acting head of the Guinean state in Conakry, to a rendezvous at the Kremlin with President Dmitri Medvedev has failed after a blaze of publicity caused the general to get cold feet.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
In cockfighting there is a hard and fast rule – if your bird won’t fight, no matter how hard you push it, you forfeit the contest, and bets on the other bird must be paid.
When it comes to fighting and hiding, Alexei Mordashov, the Russian steelmaker, appears to have been outwitted by the Ukrainians. The more he hides, the more the Ukrainians push him, the more he loses. This is the first time since the presidential election of January that the new Ukrainian government has beaten off a major Russian business figure, who has the backing of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
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The Moscow police disclosed this week that they have decided not to investigate Alfa-Inform, a Moscow security agency, after an individual describing himself as an employee of the company made a telephone threat to put John Helmer in a wheel-chair unless he removed documents relating to Alfa-Inform and Rusal from this website.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
The Evraz steel group, the large Russian steel group owned by Roman Abramovich and Alexander Abramov, is negotiating an undertaking to build a new steel rolling-mill in Kazakhstan, according to an announcement by the Kazakh deputy minister of industry, Berik Kamaliev.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Russian wheat exporters are increasingly confident of beating US wheat imports in the Egyptian import market after a new deal for 180,000 tonnes of Russian grain, priced at $178.50 per tonne, was announced this week in Cairo, and confirmed by grain trade sources in Moscow. The sale undercuts the US offer price by more than $10 per tonne.
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