Russia’s markets: the Kudrin card

Charles Clover

Charles Clover is the FT's Moscow bureau chief. Prior to this role, he spent two years as analysis page editor. He started at the FT in 1997 as a correspondent in Kazakhstan and other countries of the former Soviet Union. He worked in Afghanistan during the US campaign there, and he covered the war in Iraq from March 2003 until March 2004. Upon his return from Iraq he became the East Africa news editor for the FT.

Russia’s markets: the Kudrin card

May 21, 2013 9:28am by Charles Clover

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As Russia’s economy slows, one name comes up more and more in conversations – that of Alexei Kudrin, the former finance minister who either resigned or was sacked, depending on whom you talk to, in September 2011.

Kudrin has an unrivalled reputation for economic management, earned in more than a decade in office, before he fell foul of a rivalry with Dmitry Medvedev. Medvedev, who was president at the time and is now prime minister, accepted Kudrin’s resignation after Kudrin publicly said he wouldn’t work with Medvedev. Continue reading »

Tags: Russia economy, Russia politics Posted in Russia | Permalink

TNK-BP: rolling back Russian privatisation?

Oct 24, 2012 4:29pm by Charles Clover

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State-owned Rosneft buys TNK-BP Photo Bloomberg

Russia’s government did its best on Wednesday to affirm its continued commitment to privatisation plans, despite carrying out what is in effect the largest nationalisation in post-Soviet history this week.

Andrei Belousov, economy minister, insisted that the purchase of 100 per cent of oil company TNK-BP by state company Rosneft did not mean the government was rethinking its commitment to rolling back state ownership of the economy. Continue reading »

Tags: Lukoil, nationalisation, oil & gas, privatisation, Rosneft, TNK-BP Posted in Global | Permalink

Russia: ‘apping’ the elections

Mar 2, 2012 9:08pm by Charles Clover

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During the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, the ultimate status symbol / luxury accessory was a personal armoured train. In 1991, amid the collapse of communism in the USSR, the must have, high concept tool of democratic subversion was the VCR.

And if the current round demonstrations which have broken out in Moscow since last December ever acquire historical proportions, they will be known as the era of the smartphone. Continue reading »

Tags: internet, Russia politics, Russian elections, technology Posted in Europe, Russia | Permalink

Russia: the taxman targets eurobonds

Jan 26, 2012 5:17pm by Charles Clover

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Russian authorities are mulling tax changes that could raise borrowing costs for Russian companies on the international eurobond market by as much as 20 per cent, according to lawyers familiar with the matter.

On Thursday Moscow newspaper Vedomosti reported on a letter from deputy finance minister Sergei Shatalov to the head of Russia’s tax service recommending that they look into levying withholding taxes on interest paid to eurobond holders living abroad. Since the issuers usually pay such taxes, the direct responsibilityould fall on the Russian borrowers, not the investors. Continue reading »

Tags: bonds, investment, tax Posted in Europe, Russia | Permalink

Russia: IMF forecast darkens outlook

Jan 25, 2012 1:56pm by Charles Clover

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The International Monetary Fund has this week cut Russia’s 2012 growth forecast to 3.3 per cent from 4.1 per cent, a sign that the Fund believes Russia especially vulnerable to a slowdown in global growth. The global growth number for 2012 was cut from 4 per cent to 3.3 per cent.

Most analysts have been cutting Russia forecasts, but the IMF is even more pessimistic than they are. According to Ivan Tchakarov of Renaissance Capital, the Moscow investment bank, this is not a good sign. Continue reading »

Tags: GDP, IMF Posted in Russia | Permalink

Russia’s capital flight: not an urgent issue yet but looking bad

Jan 12, 2012 7:19pm by Charles Clover

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Russia’s total capital outflows in 2011 were $84bn as political uncertainty in the fourth quarter caused volumes to rise sharply.

However, while the year’s outflows are the second largest ever recorded in absolute terms, they are not as significant when measured against overall GDP. Continue reading »

Tags: capital flight Posted in Europe, Global, Russia | Permalink

New first for Russia’s stock market: staying open for winter holidays

Jan 9, 2012 1:53pm by Charles Clover

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Russia’s winter holidays are a sacred ritual in Russia, two weeks starting at New Year’s eve when green bottles of Sovetskoe champagne become ubiquitous and the people go en masse to their dachas.

Government offices, banks, and most of the private sector completely shuts down. But this year there is an important exception: Moscow’s stock market has remained open in an effort to advertise its increasingly global ambitions. Continue reading »

Tags: stock market Posted in Russia | Permalink

Kremlin: baldness rules

Sep 26, 2011 11:08am by Charles Clover

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Kremlinology has never been an exact science. During the Cold War, teams of CIA analysts would pore over the seating order of the May Day parade bandstand to see who was up and who is down, while today, experts parse Dmitry Medvedev’s tweets and Vladimir Putin’s bulging neck veins for any clues as to the future pecking order.

But one indicator of succession has never failed in more than a century: the bald/hair dichotomy. Continue reading »

Tags: Russia politics Posted in Russia | Permalink

Rouble: squeezed at home and abroad

Sep 23, 2011 9:40am by Charles Clover

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With markets in panic mode, Russia has not escaped the global sell-off. Capital flight and the expectation of lower oil prices has put pressure on the stock market and on the rouble which has this week plunged to its lowest since September 2009, when the country was emerging from a currency run.

Since the beginning of the month, the Micex stock index has fallen by 12 per cent and the rouble by 7 per cent against a basket of euros and dollars used by the central bank to set the exchange rate. Continue reading »

Tags: currencies, EM currencies sell-off Posted in Europe, Russia | Permalink

Blame the telly for Russia’s dollar run

Aug 23, 2011 6:30pm by Charles Clover

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A Russian TV “mockumentary” which described the fictional collapse of the world economy sent thousands of Russians rushing to sell dollars early on Tuesday, apparently believing that that they were watching real television coverage of a global run on the dollar.

“The End of the Dollar Epoch”, an hour long programe aired on Russia’s state channel 1, caused the dollar to dip slightly in morning trading after the programme aired late Monday night, and foreign exchange kiosks reported heavy dollar sales before word got out that the dollar was still in good stead on financial markets. Continue reading »

Tags: currencies, Russia economy Posted in Europe, Russia | Permalink

Russia: Medvedev privatisation plan evokes shades of Boris Yeltsin

Jul 14, 2011 2:47pm by Charles Clover

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Is president Dmitry Medvedev using privatization to get a second term as president?

If so, he would not be the first Russian president to use that gambit to energize a re-election campaign. In 1996, Boris Yeltsin, with a 3 per cent approval rating, was seen as unlikely to win against communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov. But Yeltsin’s campaign manager, Anatoly Chubais, came up with a brilliant strategy to assure victory – sell off mountains of state property in the infamous “loans for shares” programme, creating a new class of property owners who would stand to lose everything if Yeltsin lost, and thus threw their resources behind the president and secured victory. Continue reading »

Tags: privatisation, Russia politics Posted in Russia | Permalink

Medvedev bids for the oligarch vote

Jul 13, 2011 12:54pm by Charles Clover

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In Russia the slightest hint of disagreement between President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is a media sensation.

And Vedomosti duly delivered one on Wednesday, reporting that at a meeting with business leaders and oligarchs, sandwiched in between a disaster report on the sunken Bulgaria cruise ship, and afternoon head-banging session with the mayor of Moscow and the governor of Moscow Oblast, Medvedev had met around the table at his leafy residence at Gorky with over two dozen of Russia’s top business leaders. Continue reading »

Tags: elections Posted in Russia | Permalink

Medvedev’s unique selling point: he smiles

Jun 20, 2011 12:05pm by Charles Clover

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The first thing that sets Dmitry Medvedev apart from all the others is the grin. By “all the others” we mean other high ranking Russian figures, both historical and present day. In a country where companies send employees to boot camp to learn to smile at customers, where dour is the required demeanour in the business world, smiling without good cause is a bit suspicious. Guidebooks tell you to tone it down – that if you walk around Moscow smiling you will be taken for an escaped mental patient or paedophile.

Seen from this perspective, the Russian president’s penchant for smiling amounts to a dangerous political risk. But it is also the thing that gives Medvedev his own political brand. Continue reading »

Tags: elections, politics Posted in Europe, Russia | Permalink

Russia finally raises rates

Feb 25, 2011 9:50am by Charles Clover

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Russia’s central bank raised interest rates today for the first time since 2008, signaling that inflation concerns now outweigh sluggish credit growth and rouble appreciation as the bank’s chief preoccupation.

Then bank raised rates by 25 basis points Friday, to 8 per cent, ending a two year cycle of rate cuts begun in April 2009 when the bank began cutting its benchmark refinancing rate from 13 per cent to 7.75 per cent in May. Rates have been on hold for the last 8 months. Continue reading »

Tags: central banks, monetary policy Posted in Russia | Permalink

Russia & the Jasmine revolution bug

Feb 24, 2011 4:04pm by Charles Clover

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Will Russia’s Muslims catch the Middle East’s revolution bug? It is not something the Kremlin is ruling out, apparently.

Russia has been publicly critical of the popular uprisings that have swept the Middle East since the start of this year. President Dmitry Medvedev (pictured) earlier this week called the revolutionaries “fanatics” during a security meeting, and said: “All that is happening there will have a direct impact on our situation … This is a large complex problem which requires serious effort over a very long time.” Continue reading »

Tags: Arab spring Posted in Russia | Permalink

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