Business in Brief

'No Slippers, Please'

St. Petersburg City Hall has invested about 550 million rubles ($18 million) in the economic forum this year, down from 700 million rubles in 2008, the city's deputy governor Mikhail Oseyevsky said on the sidelines of the forum.

There will also be fewer contracts signed this year, Oseyevsky said Thursday, without giving any figures.

He said he hoped the city could attract foreign investment at the forum.

"We need the investors that could produce something competitive, something high-tech, and pay high salaries," Oseyevsky said. "No producers of slippers and things like that, please." (MT)

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Sberbank to Sell Opel Stake?

Sberbank may sell its stake in the automaker Opel to a strategic investor, chief executive German Gref said at the forum Thursday. The purchase of the stake will cost the bank about 500 million euros ($705 million), he said.

Gref also said Sberbank will make a decision this autumn on whether to buy a stake in Kazakhstan's BTA Bank.

Sberbank hasn't yet assessed the value of BTA and is working with Kazakhstan's National Well-Being Fund Samruk-Kazyna to "understand the situation with the bank's debts," Gref said at the forum. (Bloomberg)

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Wal-Mart May Come Soon

X5 expects Wal-Mart to come to Russia soon and believes that the U.S. giant has ambitious plans for the national market, X5 chief executive Lev Khasis said Thursday.

"Wal-Mart is obviously interested in the Russian market and will enter it soon. They have ambitious plans regarding Russia," he said.

Wal-Mart, which has an office in Moscow, last year joined a Russian retail lobby group, chaired by Khasis, after hiring an executive to head its efforts to explore opportunities in Russia and neighboring markets. (Bloomberg)

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Chubais Sees Recovery

Russia's economy will stop contracting in the third quarter, Rusnano chief executive Anatoly Chubais said Thursday at the forum.

Chubais said the government's response to the worst financial crisis in more than a decade has been "professional" and that he's "cautiously optimistic" about recovery. (Bloomberg)

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RusAl May Miss Payment

United Company RusAl will miss a June 11 deadline to renegotiate $7.4 billion of debt to foreign banks, chairman Viktor Vekselberg said Thursday.

The company "won't need long" after the deadline to reach an agreement with lenders, he said. (Bloomberg)

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Vekselberg on Politicization

Victor Vekselberg said the U.S. and European government's acquisitions of stakes in major banks are making financial markets more "politicized."

Decisions by U.S. and EU banks on loans and rates for Russian companies and even cooperation with them is being influenced by the government, Vekselberg said.

He also predicted on Thursday that annual sales from a planned Russian solar-panel factory will reach 10 billion rubles ($330 million) by 2015.

His Renova investment company, which will own 51 percent of the factory due to be built in the republic of Chuvashia by 2012, will get 3.7 billion rubles for the project from state-owned Rusnano. (Bloomberg)

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LUKoil's Kazakh Purchase

LUKoil may pay BP more than $1.5 billion for assets in Kazakhstan, CEO Vagit Alekperov said Thursday.

LUKoil plans to buy out BP from their Lukarco joint venture, he said

Lukarco holds 5 percent in the TengizChevroil oil production venture and 12.5 percent of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium in Kazakhstan. (Bloomberg)

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BP to Delay TNK Share Sale

BP said it will delay a share sale in a unit of its Russian venture, TNK-BP, by at least a year to 2011 because of lower market valuations, Peter Charow, BP's vice president for Russia and Kazakhstan, said Thursday at the forum.

The timing will be "market driven," and shareholders haven't yet decided on which TNK-BP unit will sell shares.

BP and its partners in September agreed to sell as much as 20 percent of TNK-BP in an initial public offering in 2010 to boost value. (Bloomberg)

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BP Happy With Fridman

BP chief executive Tony Hayward said Thursday that his company's conflict with the Russian shareholders of their TNK-BP oil venture is over.

"That's just business," Hayward said on the sidelines of the forum. Hayward said he's "happy" with the joint decision by the venture's shareholders to appoint Mikhail Fridman acting CEO until one of two nominated candidates takes over. (Bloomberg)

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Hayward Vs. Trade Barriers

BP chief executive Tony Hayward urged Russia on Thursday to drop barriers to foreign investment and mitigate risks as "capital is in short supply."

"Erecting barriers to the inflow of foreign direct investment is questionable," Hayward said at the forum. "Russia would benefit from higher investment." (Bloomberg)

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Shokhin Sees Trade Zone

Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus may introduce a free-trade zone next year, Alexander Shokhin, head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, said Thursday at the forum.

The zone would best operate under World Trade Organization rules.

He also said Russia should re-examine a law on strategic natural resources that limits access to deposits in order to attract investment (Bloomberg)

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Gazprom to Buy Azeri Gas

Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller said Thursday that the gas producer has "all conditions to start purchases of Azeri gas soon."

Russia and Azerbaijan have "always" been linked by a gas pipeline network, Miller said at a meeting with Rovnag Abdullayev, head of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan. (Bloomberg)

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Kinross Mulls Investment

Kinross Gold, Canada's third- largest gold producer, is considering as many as 50 investments in all countries where the company has operations, including Russia, vice president James Crossland said Thursday at the forum.

Kinross wants to acquire "development-stage" or "active" projects and is likely to take on local partners for any investments in Russia. (Bloomberg)

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For the Record

Caterpillar is holding talks with Transneft on equipment sales and is seeking "long-term opportunities" with Russia's oil pipeline operator, Alexei Cherepkov, a spokesman for the U.S. machinery maker said Thursday. (Bloomberg)

ExxonMobil vice president Zeljko Runje said Thursday that the Odoptu field in the Sakhalin-1 project should start producing in the first quarter of 2011. (Bloomberg)

X5 Retail Group plans to open 100 stores this year, including seven hypermarkets, chief executive Lev Khasis said Thursday at the forum. (Bloomberg)

ExxonMobil's Sakhalin-1 venture off Russia's Pacific coast has invested $7 billion to date, Exxon Development President Neil Duffin said at the forum on Thursday. (Bloomberg)