Chavez Cheers Lada
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said last week that AvtoVAZ had proposed building a Lada assembly line in his country.
Chavez told a conference that he owned a Lada in the early 1990s, which he used to drive all over Venezuela until his divorce, at which point he left it to his former wife. "This is a great, beautiful, cheap car for the people," Chavez said, Prime-Tass reported. (MT)
Alliance Raises $390M
Alliance Oil, formerly known as West Siberian Resources, said it raised $390 million in a sale of new shares and convertible bonds, exceeding the $325 million it expected and marking the first successful public share placement by a Russia-focused firm since the economic crisis began.
Alliance Oil priced the sale at $265 million in convertible bonds and about $125 million in the form of Swedish depositary receipts. (Reuters)
Oil Duty May Hit $212.60
The government may raise the duty on crude oil by 39 percent on July 1, the Finance Ministry said Monday.
The duty will probably rise to $212.60 a ton ($29 a barrel) from $152.80, said Alexander Sakovich, deputy head of the ministry's customs payment department. (Bloomberg)
Trade With China Falls
Chinese-Russian trade fell 39.2 percent to $13.5 billion in the first five months, the first decline in 10 years, because of the global recession, said Gao Hucheng, China's deputy minister of commerce, Xinhua news agency reported.
China's imports from Russia dropped 29.3 percent to $7.43 billion, while exports to Russia fell 48 percent to $6.06 billion, Gao said at a trade fair. (Bloomberg)
GM Man on GAZ Board
Bo Andersson, a former vice president of General Motors, may become chairman of the board of automaker GAZ Group, the company said Monday in an e-mailed statement.
Andersson currently serves as an adviser to GAZ owner Oleg Deripaska on the auto industry.
He has accepted an invitation to join the GAZ board. (Bloomberg)
TGK-1 Profit Falls 56%
TGK-1 said net income tumbled 56 percent last year to 1.05 billion rubles ($33.7 million) under international accounting standards.
Revenue advanced 19 percent to 33.6 billion rubles in the period, TGK-1 said Monday. (Bloomberg)
For the Record
Mosenergo arranged a credit line of 415 million euros ($575 million) provided by Calyon and Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale to help buy equipment from Siemens, the company said Monday. (Bloomberg) Russian Railways sold 15 billion rubles ($480 million) of eight-year bonds with a coupon of 14.33 percent, the company said Monday. (Bloomberg) Severstal said Monday that Sberbank agreed to a $300 million credit facility, which will be used for working capital and refinancing existing debt. (Bloomberg)
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