By John Helmer, Moscow

China’s appetite for iron-ore to make steel is one of the engines driving the entire industrial world. No mystery there, and no news.
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by John Helmer - Sunday, February 13th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

How real is the downturn in Russian company valuations and the sell-off in Russian stocks ?

Here’s what the Financial Times reports today, following the cancellation in London of the three Russian IPO’s – Koks, Chelyabinsk Pipe, and now Nord Gold:
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by John Helmer - Friday, February 11th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The key figure behind years of allegations against three Russian partners — Oleg Deripaska, Michael Cherney (Mikhail Chernoy), and Iskander Makhmudov — appears to have turned turtle, and sought a meeting with Cherney in Israel late last month.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, February 10th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Not even Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at a smelter inauguration, Bloomberg promotion, lashings of gold paint on the factory walls, and fourteen hundred spotless white worker uniforms have given Chelyabinsk Pipe (Chelpipe, ChTPZ), Russia’s third largest producer of steel pipes and tubes, the dressing-up required to attract international buyers for its shares on the London Stock Exchange. Chelpipe is the property of Andrei Komarov (rabbit), whom Forbes reports to be a billionaire, if Chelpipe is worth what he says it is. Only it isn’t.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, February 10th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Note to readers: The Australian dollar has been at or above parity with the US dollar for several months. All dollar amounts reported in this story are in Australian dollars unless indicated otherwise.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 8th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In the Naughty-Boy School of Government, it is required for the boys to apply for the master’s permission to sit; stand; ask a question; refill their inkwells, and leave the room to answer the call of nature. In the history of the great English Public Schools, a great deal of bladder control was taught by this method, along with a certain callosity across the knuckles and on the buttocks.
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by John Helmer - Monday, February 7th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Standard Bank is close to selling out its Russian bank interests, along with its 36.43% stake in Moscow-based Troika Dialog, to Sberbank, the Russian state savings institution and dominant retail bank in the country.
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by John Helmer - Friday, February 4th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Alrosa, Russia’s state diamond monopoly, will be ready to hold an initial public offering (IPO) by late 2011 for a 20% stake in the company, Alrosa’s chief executive Fyodor Andreyev said cryptically on the sidelines of a Moscow investor conference on Wednesday. But will international investors be ready to buy shares of Alrosa by then, and at what discount to the share value of Alrosa’s global mining peers?
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by John Helmer - Thursday, February 3rd, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In December, when we last visited with Mikhail Prokhorov, the only Russian to own an American basketball team, he appeared to be announcing that he prefers his ball to his shovel, and is getting ready to sell Polyus Gold, Russia’s leading goldminer, to “one of the leading gold companies in the world”.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

At the gentlemen’s club bar, within stone’s throw of BP headquarters in St. James’s, the world famous investor confessed to having a tighter grasp on his gin and tonic than on the benefits he can count from BP’s deal with Rosneft, at least for shareholders of the former company.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 1st, 2011
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