Metalloinvest Asks for Time
Metalloinvest is asking banks to give the company more time to repay loans as prices for its products slide, a company spokesman said Thursday.
The company, controlled by billionaire Alisher Usmanov, needs to repay about $1.5 billion this year and another $700 million in the first half of 2010, Vedomosti reported Thursday.
Total debt amounts to $5.5 billion, the newspaper said.
(Bloomberg)

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Bank Licenses to Be Pulled
A further 50 to 60 banks are likely to lose their licenses before the end of 2009, Alexei Turbanov, the head of the Deposit Insurance Agency, said Thursday.
Turbanov told a banking conference that his agency would likely take control of another 15 to 20 banks this year, in addition to those set to lose their licenses.
(Reuters)

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Renaissance Consumer Unit
Renaissance Credit resumed lending to Russian consumers after halting loans 10 months ago as global credit markets froze, chief executive Alexei Levchenko said Thursday.
“We will be much more conservative than 10 months ago,” when Renaissance was forced to cut its lending, he said. The bank generated a “liquidity cushion” allowing it to give out as much as $200 million in consumer loans by year end, Levchenko said.
 (Bloomberg)

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Reserves Fall by $1.4Bln
The country’s international reserves slid $1.4 billion last week after two consecutive weekly gains as the Central Bank halted foreign-currency purchases and a slump in oil prices curbed capital inflow, the bank said Thursday.
The value of the stockpile, the world’s third-largest after China’s and Japan’s, fell to $409.1 billion after climbing $3.4 billion to $410.5 billion a week earlier, the bank said. 
(Bloomberg)

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TMK Gets $450M Loan
VTB Group granted TMK a $450 million loan to help the pipe maker finance a bond buyback program, the state bank said Thursday.
The loan is for one year and can be extended to a maximum of 1,825 days, the bank said.
(Bloomberg)

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Gas to Armenia Resumes
Russian shipments of gas to Armenia via Georgia resumed after maintenance was completed on the pipeline, a spokeswoman for the Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation said Thursday.
“Gas flow was resumed right after 10 a.m. today after maintenance was completed on the pipeline,” the spokeswoman said. Shipments were halted Wednesday. 
(Bloomberg)

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For the Record
Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov said Thursday that he opposes the “illegal” sale of assets by Open Investments, which he owns together with former business partner Vladimir Potanin.
 (Bloomberg)

Russia’s trade surplus widened in May to $8.8 billion from $6.7 billion the previous month, the Central Bank said Thursday. 
(Bloomberg)

TNK-BP completed a transaction that brings its “effective shareholding” in Ukraine’s Lisichansk Refinery close to 100 percent, the company said Thursday.
(Bloomberg)