- Print This Post Print This Post

After a series of battles with Newmont, Indonesian officials and NGOs keep up the anti-mine fight, this time targeting the Toka Tindung gold project. Author: John Helmer Posted: Monday , 31 Mar 2008 LONDON – The boomerang is an Australian aboriginal word for a throwing stick; but the weapon itself isn’t indigenous to Australia. Its […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow Russian multi-mineral fertilizer group calls for investor upgrade ahead of IPO. Traced on the map, Verkhnekamskoye (“Upper Kama”) looks like a molar tooth, with an unusually deep root. On the ground, in the Perm region of central Russia, it is the second largest deposit of potash known in the world. […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow Deripaska and Prokhorov holding companies trade claims over Norilsk Nickel deal contract. Onexim, the Moscow holding unit for Mikhail Prokhorov, has broken its silence on the troubled sale of a 25% stake in Norilsk Nickel — in a manner of speaking. Terms for the deal between Prokhorov and Oleg Deripaska, […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow When T.S. Eliot was summing up what he knew of hollow men, he concluded: “this is the way the world ends/not with a bang but a whimper”. This is also the way Russia’s biggest-ever hostile takeover, Oleg Deripaska’s bid to take control of Norilsk Nickel, is ending. The contract deadline […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow The wind-chill factor this winter in Tajikistan has produced record low temperatures and uncounted miseries for a population struggling with inadequate electricity supply and failing heat. Tajik newborns have been reported as having died from hypothermia while in hospital wards. But on March 5, a single whistle-blow from the International […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow PR spin battles US recession to hype Russian steel deal Taylor Rafferty is an international public relations company which works for Alexei Mordashov, the controlling shareholder of Severstal, third ranked Russian steelmaker. Its job is to help Mordashov extricate his foot from his mouth, and his hand from public shareholder […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow Polyus public shareholders in the dark about proposed new gold mine asset sale Sixty years elapsed between the first US patents issued for the yo-yo, and 1928, when the wooden axle on a string became a fad in California, and then spread across the US. By 1965, the yo-yo was […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow Uralkali keeps the initiative as potash breaks $600. A series of Russian government decisions this month, awarding new mining licences at a premium valuation; imposing export duties; and regulating the domestic price of fertilizers for the next five years has triggered fresh forecasts for the direction of Russian potash producers, […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

IMF joins UK High Court in corruption investigations of Tajik aluminium dealing. “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York”. That’s the opening of the most vicious dynastic bloodbath on the English stage, spoken by the nastiest of Shakespeare’s royal villains — the hump-back plotter who becomes Richard […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow Russia has been locked out of the largest nuclear power contract ever prepared in Africa, despite two years of promises from the South African government that it would invite Russia’s nuclear industry to join a competitive tender with the French and American companies, Areva and Westinghouse. The lockoutappears to be […]