Turkey South Stream Invite

Russia has offered Turkey an opportunity to participate in the South Stream pipeline project, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told reporters on Wednesday, Interfax reported.

"We have discussed all the different choices for gas delivery, including Nabucco, and feel that the more different projects there are in this sphere … the better," Sechin said. (MT)

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Gazprom Bond Issues

Gazprom said Wednesday that it has issued two series of bonds worth 5 billion rubles ($160.3 million) and 10 billion rubles in the biggest bond issue since credit markets froze up last fall.

The coupon rates were set at 13.12 percent and 13.75 percent, making the issues, which were three times oversubscribed, the cheapest placement since the crisis began.

Purchases made by Gazprombank, which acquired 770 million rubles' worth of the bonds, represented about 5.1 percent of both emissions, and VTB, which bought up 1.65 billion rubles' worth, acquired 11 percent. (MT)

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KamAZ '08 Profit Tumbles

KamAZ, the country's largest truck maker, reported on Wednesday an 86 percent slump in 2008 net profit to 1.07 billion rubles ($34.32 million).

Revenues eased to 96.35 billion rubles from 97.23 billion a year earlier, while debt stood at 22.4 billion rubles, up from 12.8 million in 2007. Of the debt outstanding in 2008, 19 billion rubles was due to mature within a year, the company said. (Reuters)

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RusHydro Seeks ADRs

RusHydro applied to the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission to allow conversion of some of its shares into American Depositary Receipts, the company said Wednesday.

RusHydro expects to make ADRs available to investors for over-the-counter trading by the middle of next month, the company said. The ADRs won't be listed on an exchange. (Bloomberg)

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'09 Inflation Reaches 7.4%

The inflation rate in the year through June 29 was 7.4 percent, compared with 7.2 percent through June 22 and 8.7 percent in the same period a year earlier, the State Statistics Service said on its web site Wednesday.

Consumer prices advanced 0.2 percent between June 23 and June 29 after rising 0.1 percent the previous week, the service said. (Bloomberg)

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Wealth Funds Fell $6.5Bln

Russia's sovereign wealth funds fell $6.5 billion in June, the Finance Ministry said on its web site Wednesday.

The Reserve Fund fell to $94.5 billion from $101 billion the previous month, while the National Welfare Fund was unchanged at $89.9 billion, the ministry said. (Bloomberg)

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For the Record

Gazprom plans to sell $1.5 billion of bonds to international investors to help its oil arm buy Sibir Energy, Interfax reported Wednesday. (Bloomberg)

Alfa Bank said Wednesday that it received a 16-year, subordinated $320 million loan from its owners. (Bloomberg)

Atomenergoprom said in a statement Wednesday that sales reached 306 billion rubles last year on $4.5 billion of exports. (Bloomberg)