Dec. 7 – Vladimir Putin’s United Russia achieved a conventional victory in last weekend’s parliament election, winning 49.5 percent of Sunday’s vote for the State Duma, down from 64.3 percent in 2007, the last full year of Putin’s second Kremlin term, according to the Central Election Commission.
The party that has dominated the 450-seat Duma since 2003 had its majority cut from 315 seats to about 238. Read the rest of this entry »
Nov. 18 – After roughly 18 years of membership talks, Russia finally looks set to enter the World Trade Organization on favorable conditions, both Russian and international analysts say noting the minor import tariff cuts.
The final barrier keeping Russia from the global trade club fell when Russia and Georgia signed an agreement approving Russia’s WTO entry on November 9 in Geneva, after both agreed on international monitoring of the disputed crossings with the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Read the rest of this entry »
Nov. 14 – Restrictions on Russian companies that want to list equity on foreign exchanges will not be lifted until a central security depositary is fully implemented, Federal Financial Markets Service (FFSM) Head Dmitry Pankin said on Thursday.
Speaking at a Deutsche Bank forum, Pankin said the restrictions on foreign listings could only be removed after a long-anticipated central securities depositary had been fully established, Russian daily Vedomosti reported.
“After the implementation of the central depositary, we will remove the 25 percent limitations,” he said. Read the rest of this entry »
Nov. 9 – Russia is preparing for a historic return to deep space with the launch of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft on Wednesday on an ambitious and risky three-year US$163 million mission to bring back a soil sample from the Red Planet.
The launch is scheduled for 12:16 a.m. Moscow time this Wednesday (20.16 GMT Tuesday), Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) reports. The Zenit-2SB rocket with the Phobos-Grunt mission is set to launch from the Baikonur Space Center located in Kazakhstan. Read the rest of this entry »
Nov. 8 – The Russian gas giant Gazprom opened an office in Rio de Janeiro last week, while another Russian oil producer TNK-BP announced an agreement to buy 45 percent of the Solimoes Basin project for US$1 billion from the Brazilian HRT Participacoes em Petroleo.
TNK-BP and HRT Participacoes em Petroleo will jointly produce oil and gas from fields near the Amazon, with first output expected next year.
“The discovery of major hydrocarbon deposits in Latin America and the high growth rates of natural gas consumption there provide for an effective development of partnership relations,” The Moscow Times reported a Gazprom official as saying. Read the rest of this entry »
Nov. 1 – Walt Disney Co., owner of ABC television, has agreed to buy a 49 percent stake in Russia’s Seven TV network owned by United TV Holdings and will rename it the Disney Channel. The deal was announced at the meeting between Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President and CEO of Walt Disney Co. Robert Iger.
“International expansion is a key strategic priority for our company and Disney Channel has proven to be invaluable in building the Disney brand around the world,” Robert Iger said in a statement. Read the rest of this entry »
Oct. 14 – The so-called third anti-monopoly package “On Amendments to the Federal Law On Protection of Competition and Certain Other Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation,” passed by the lower house of Parliament (State Duma) in the third and final reading.
The package developed by the Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service and approved by the presidium of the cabinet in June includes two draft laws amending the law about competitiveness protection, the Criminal Code, the Code about the Administrative Violations and a range of the other legislative acts, according to reports by RIA Novosti. Read the rest of this entry »
Oct. 10 – Russia and Georgia’s two day talks on Moscow’s bid to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) ended without agreement on Saturday, despite U.S. support for Russia’s accession. Georgia said it would block Moscow’s attempts to join the WTO unless Russia’s position changed.
“The negotiations are over and we can say that they collapsed, ended with no result at all,” Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergi Kapanadze, the head of his country’s delegation to the talks in Switzerland, told reporters.
Switzerland in March started mediating negotiations between Russia and Georgia, which fought a five-day war in 2008 over the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia. Georgia has cited disputes over customs checkpoints in South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia, as reasons to withhold its approval for Russian WTO membership. Read the rest of this entry »
Oct. 7 – The ruble dropped to its weakest close against the dollar in more than two years on Wednesday, while the outflows of capital from Russia reached an estimated US$18.7 billion in the third quarter, bringing this year’s total to US$49.3 billion, the Central Bank said.
Yesterday, the ruble was slightly strengthened to 32.56 per dollar and rose 0.3 percent to 43.34 against the euro by the 7 p.m. close in Moscow. Read the rest of this entry »
Oct. 4 – U.S. investment banking giant JPMorgan announced its first local project aimed to develop a new integrated approach to orphan social adaptation to society, local press reports.
In partnership with its philanthropy New Eurasia Foundation (NEF), JPMorgan is aiming to bring together noncommercial organizations, government bodies and corporate sponsors in a common framework to address the problem of socialization for young adults leaving institutional care. Read the rest of this entry »
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