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. […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow Russia’s industrial and mining sectors are so thoroughly dominated by the handful of proprietors known as oligarchs, the only time that federal government regulators dare to interfere with their operations by attempting to enforce the law is when the regulators get their cue from a senior government official. And the […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow Despite sinking Russian consumer incomes, the banana is holding firm, enabling the St. Petersburg-based Joint Fruit Company (JFC), to increase its share of sales at the expense of its domestic rivals. With turnover of $500 million in 2007 (the latest figure JFC has released), JFC says there has been no […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
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