By John Helmer in Moscow
O dear! Noddy can’t make the loop the loop. After his last adventure in the jungles of northeastern Guinea, Noddy found that he still owed so much money to his bankers, he wasn’t allowed to make big-ticket plane rides without their permission.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
When two of Russia’s most reclusive oligarchs are publicly reported to be in a big shareholding transaction, rumour of which suddenly drives up the share price of the asset by 25%, the least that can suspected is that someone is manipulating the market for personal gain. So, when Suleiman Kerimov is reported to be in talks to buy all, or much of Dmitry Rybolovlev’s control stake in potash producer Uralkali, it is reasonable to suppose at least one of them is aiming to make a killing – to use a figure of speech.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
The Russian state bailout bank, VEB, chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has defended the pricing of two Arctic ice-class, Panamax sized tankers ordered by Sovcomflot, which analysts and brokers have criticized as substantially above market price.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
The last of the titans who have dominated Alrosa, Russia’s diamond monopoly, since its founding in 1993 has handed in his resignation, and had it accepted by the Kremlin. Vyacheslav Shtirov (also spelled Shtyrov, right image) has left for “personal reasons”, announced an aide to President Dmitri Medvedev. The reasons are his health and his family, claims a high-level Sakha diamantaire. He hasn’t been pushed out, claims another.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, with several government ministers, met on Monday [May 31] with representatives of Russian steel mills, carmakers, and state companies to discuss steel-pricing mechanisms. Putin started off wagging the stick, but it isn’t obvious that anyone in the audience thought he was serious.
Putin began the session by attacking the 25% to 30% price hikes which the domestic steelmakers have been seeking from consumers, starting on June 1. Resistance to these new prices led first to the halt of steel deliveries to car production lines ten days ago; and then to public lobbying by the steel consumers advocating a Kremlin-ordered price rise cap of 17%, an export tax on steel sold abroad, and other sanctions to pull the steelmakers into line.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
This sequence of picture-frames was taken by cameramen of RenTV, a Moscow television channel, of a vote on first-reading legislation by the State Duma, the initiating chamber for federal laws in Russia, on May 19.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Alrosa chief executive Fyodor Andreyev has attempted to persuade the Sakha region to lift its veto on restructuring the shareholding of the company, and then selling shares in a public privatization or initial public offering (IPO).
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By John Helmer in Moscow
As Russian villagers used to say in olden times, when the tsar is kind, the wait to see him is long; when he is cruel, there is no delay at all.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s explicit attack on steel prices at the start of this week, and the commencement of a new antitrust investigation of price-rigging against the Evraz group, have opened the floodgates to a spate of complaints — by the state-owned car manufacturers against the flat-sheet mills, and by the oil companies against the pipemakers.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday launched an orchestrated attack on steel prices and the profit margins of Russia’s steelmaking groups during a meeting with the head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), Igor Artemyev.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Far Eastern Shipping Company (Fesco, ticker FESH)), the Russian dry-cargo fleet operator, plans to make a public issue of new shares to pay down debt. A total of 659.6 million new shares will be issued, the Fesco spokesman Stanislav Vartanyan told Fairplay; this bloc of shares makes about 23% of the company’s present charter capital. Vartanyan denies the move signals that recently disclosed plans to sell a substantial stake in the company to a non-Russian strategic investor have not materialized. But a Fesco report to investors a month ago did not mention the public share sale as an option.
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