By John Helmer in Moscow

A Republic of Guinea tribunal ruled this week in Conakry that United Company Rusal, one of the largest bauxite, alumina and aluminum producers in the world, unlawfully acquired its shareholding control of the Friguia alumina refinery in the country in 2006, and should make restitution.

The judgement comes before the federal court in Nigeria rules on a parallel case, challenging Rusal’s takeover of the Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria (Alscon) in the same year. But before the Nigerian court decides, a report from the National Committee on Privatisation has already gone to Nigeria’s President Umaru Yar’ Adua (pictured top centre), concluding that violations of the privatisation rules and subsequent investment conditions for Alscon should lead to the revocation of Rusal’s concession in that country.

The West African decisions have come despite recent visits to both countries by Deripaska himself. He was in Nigeria in June, where he had, according to his company website, “a series of consultations with Nigerian government authorities and businessmen”. Nigerian sources claim he sought a meeting with Yar’ Adua, but was turned down. Six weeks later in early August, Deripaska was in Guinea. This time the company says he “had a series of meetings with the management of the company’s operations in Guinea and representatives of local communities.”
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by John Helmer - Friday, September 11th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

In the sharpest warning issued to date by an international ratings agency about a major Russian steelmaker, Standard & Poors (S&P) said yesterday there is “significant doubt about the group’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

Evraz is Russia’s largest steel and mining group. It is controlled by the Millhouse holding of Roman Abramovich and Eugene Shvidler (pictured left to right, respectively) , plus the last of the founding shareholders, Alexander Abramov, and his protege Alexander Frolov. Until recently, these men have been considered among the most bankable of Russian metal magnates, and Abramovich the most secure of Russian oligarchs.

The S&P report, authored by analysts Alex Herbert and Andrey Nikolaev, downgrades Evraz’s corporate credit and unsecured debt ratings from BB- to B+. The move, according to S&P, reflects “our opinion that there is heightened uncertainty about the willingness of banks to agree to waive or amend financial covenants, and the ability of Evraz to address its currently very weak liquidity. This follows the announcement by Evraz of operating results for the six months to June 30, 2009, that were even weaker than we had previously anticipated. Evraz faces a difficult combination of very low cash flow generation caused by the severe steel industry downturn and substantial adjusted debt from previous debt-financed acquisitions. In addition, the group has persistently high short-term debt and faces potential financial covenant breaches, which may be more difficult to address than management expects.”
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by John Helmer - Friday, September 11th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Port logs for the MV Arctic Sea — the small Turkish-built, Russian-owned vessel recently reported at the centre of an alleged piracy and extortion attempt — reveal that the timber-carrier has been making regular voyages between Finnish ports and either Algerian or French Mediterranean ports for the past three years. However, the disappearance reported to have occurred between July 24 and August 24, triggering a spate of feverish speculation in Tel Aviv and London about secret missile smuggling, appears not to be the first time the Arctic Sea has disappeared; or at least gone missing from the maritime record known as the international Automatic Identification System (AIS).

Each year recently, according to AIS records, the vessel appears to be missing from the logs in the Mediterranean for up to 20 days at a time. In April of this year, the Arctic Sea is missing from AIS port-call records between April 1, when it transited the Gibraltar Straits, moving east, and April 11, when it returned through the straits, moving west. A similar gap in the log records appeared a year earlier, between February 13, 2008, when the Arctic Sea sailed east past Gibraltar into the Mediterranean, and 20 days later, on March 4, when it transited the Gibraltar Straits moving westwards. In 2007, the gap in the logs appears between April 26, when the vessel entered the Mediterranean, and May 14, when it exited. In all cases, the vessel appears to have taken on cargo at Loviisa and Kotka (Finland), and Tallinn (Estonia).
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Two weeks ago, without fanfare, the US Government decided it will not allow General Motors (GM), in which the government owns the controlling 60% stake, to sell its European automobile division to a Russian combination of the state savings bank Sberbank, Oleg Deripaska’s GAZ auto plant, and Deripaska’s Canadian partner, Frank Stronach’s Magna. Compared to the refusal of the US to grant Deripaska a visa to enter the country, this was a more powerful, definitive, and public message.

Deripaska conceded this week in an interview with a Moscow newspaper that his attempt to go international with the acquisition of Opel of Germany (as well as the UK’s Vauxhall and Sweden’s Saab units) has failed, because of the US government’s veto. Asked if the “attitude towards Russian business abroad is still ambiguous”, Deripaska replied: “Unfortunately, yes. But in the Opel case, the US Department of State’s prejudices are also a problem.”
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

No sooner had De Beers and Archangel Diamond Corporation (ADC) revived last Friday, September 4, their US litigation plan of attack against LUKoil and its senior management, headed by Vagit Alekperov, than Alekperov issued an unprecedented statement saying he is thinking of selling out of diamonds altogether.

Until now,Alekperov has insisted, both privately and publicly, that he would never sell the mining rights to the deposit at Verkhotina, in the Russian northwestern region of Arkhangelsk. According to US court documents, Alekperov, together with his one-time friend and business partner, Alisher Usmanov, was responsible for the takeover of the mining licence in 1998, two years after its discovery, through Arkhangelskgeoldobycha (AGD), a regional state geology organization, which was privatized and ultimately taken over by LUKoil.
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by John Helmer - Monday, September 7th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

The Russian wine market has been drying up, though it’s on account of falling incomes, not because of recent exhortations by mental health specialists and President Dmitry Medvedev to curb drinking.

“The average statistical man in our country is a drunkard,” according to Alexander Nemtsov, a department head at the Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry. That’s because Russians drink about 15 litres of pure alcohol a year, 80% of it in high-proof form.

Medvedev has responded with a recent appeal to “stop the growing consumption of alcohol among young people. The habit of drinking with and without a reason may lead to heavy alcohol addiction in a rather short time. According to the data we have, one-third of young men and almost 20% of young women use such drinks daily or every other day…The sale of alcohol to people under the age of 18 is banned in Russia now as it has always been. It’s no secret that this requirement is often ignored, which it was not in Soviet times.”
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by John Helmer - Friday, September 4th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

De Beers has accepted a new plan which makes litigation in a Denver, Colorado, courtroom against LUKoil the centrepiece of the diamond-miner’s survival strategy; and the prospect of multi-million dollar compensation the Toronto-listed company’s most valuable asset.

A new document, filed this week in the US Bankrupty Court in Denver (case number 09-22621-HRT), sets out the terms of the agreement to revive the court case against Russians charged with contract violations and fraudulently withholding the mining licence rights for the Grib pipe in northwestern Russia of Archangel Diamond Corporation (ticker: AAD:V). De Beers owns 56% of ADC’s shares. In legal jargon, the new plan converts an involuntary bankruptcy scheme under Sect 7 of the US bankruptcy code into a section 11 voluntary arrangement. The first scheme had been proposed in July by ADC’s principal lawyer, Bruce Marks (pictured right), and two minority investors, Firebird Global Master Fund, a US investor, and Clive Hartz, an Australian. They acted after De Beers had threatened ADC with foreclosure on a loan of almost $10 million, and the abandonment of the two legal claims ADC has been waging — in the Coloroado District Court, and in the Stockholm international arbitration tribunal.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Depending on how fanciful you wish to be, the Flying Dutchman is either a reference to the nautical refraction phenomenon that makes phantom ships appear at sea, like mirages, in conditions of temperature inversion; or else it’s a tale of a half-mad Dutch sea captain, whose 17th century navigational ineptitude caused him to confuse his position inside False Bay, off the southern South African coast, and to be lost with all hands.

A lesser Dutch phenomenon that has been plying Russian waters since 1990 is the Moscow Times, a newspaper that was started, and is still run, by Derk Sauer (pictured); who offered it to Mikhail Khodorkovsky; and sold it another two times over through the late Leonid Rozhetskin. Some of the lesser, and some of the greater humourists of post-revolutionary Russian journalism got their first bylines into print there. But fun and fact are two different phenomena: as the Sauer crew peer from their poop deck, they have the bad habit of seeing their own vessel as much mightier than it is.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Ronald McDonald is the most famous brand-name franchise in the world.

It operates 32,000 sales points, with more than 58 million clients, in about 118 countries around the world. Currently, the McDonald’s Corporation has a market capitalization of $61 billion; this is only 16% below the peak of its pre-crisis value last year.

This is what the McDonald’s Corporation says about how it does business: “McDonald’s has always been a franchising company and has relied on its franchisees, our Owner/Operators, to play a major role in the System’s success. McDonald’s remains committed to franchising as a predominant way of doing business. We are actively seeking highly qualified business people to join our System as Owner/Operators. Owning a McDonald’s restaurant is a tremendous opportunity. We are seeking individuals with significant business experience who have successfully owned or managed multiple business units or have led multiple departments and who have significant financial resources. We are a family of over 2400 Owner/Operators passionate about satisfying our customers, growing our business, making money and having fun.”
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by John Helmer - Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

A blindfold has been tied over the whereabouts of Russian member of parliament and steelmaker, Vadim Varshavsky, as estimates of his liabilities multiply, and questions are raised of how his borrowings were spent, and where the money is now.

The Rostov Electrometallurgical Works (REMZ), the newest of the mills of the Estar group, owned by Vadim Varshavsky, is being considered by state administrators for a handover to other Russian steel groups in order to prevent its collapse. The minimill was launched for operational testing in late 2007, with a capacity for 750,000 tonnes of liquid steel per annum, and a product portfolio of long products intended for the southwestern Russian construction sector. After a highly publicized commissioning in February of 2008, Rostov’s production reached design capacity by mid-2008, and had been slated for growth in 2009, according to company statements. This has not materialized.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
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