Norilsk Nickel has no funds to extend a further buyback offer to shareholder United Company RusAl at present, chief executive officer Vladimir Strzhalkovsky said Thursday. (Bloomberg) Russian bank lending to nonfinancial companies grew 26 percent last year, retail lending climbed 36 percent, while bank assets expanded 23 percent, Central Bank deputy chairman Alexei Simanovsky said Thursday. (Bloomberg)

... increased its net interest income by almost 28 percent year on year in January, which the bank said was partly due to an "increased volume of working assets." But despite the strong bottom line, Sberbank failed to match the three-year-high lending volumes seen in December, when it provided about 850 billion rubles to corporate borrowers and more than 190 billion rubles to retail customers. The lender said its lending volumes more than halved in January from December, as it provided 400...

... continued during January, but that the country may experience net inflows during 2012, Bloomberg reported. About $84.2 billion left the country in 2011.   The Central Bank also said the total credit granted by Russian banks had grown dramatically in 2011. Lending to private individuals rose 35.9 percent and to companies by 26 percent.     Deputy chairman Alexei Simanovsky said lending by Russian banks in 2012 was likely to rise 20 percent to 25 percent, Interfax reported. However, record bank profits in...

Toyota Motor said Thursday that it would invest an additional 7 billion yen ($90 million) at its St. Petersburg factory to add stamping and resin-molding processes to the production of its Camry sedan in 2014. (Reuters) VTB said Wednesday that it would lend bankrupt travel firm Lanta-Tur Voyage $7 million at a 12 percent interest rate, Vedomosti reported Thursday. (Reuters)

... Russia with loans," the ratings company said in a report released Monday. "The slowdown in domestic loan growth is expected to be reflected in corporates revising their funding needs downward by slowing investment plans." Russian bank lending will expand 20 percent this year, down from a 30 percent increase in 2011. "This is worth a still-substantial equivalent of $150 billion," Fitch said. (Bloomberg)

LONDON — Rosneft is looking to tap the international lending market for a sizeable syndicated loan only six weeks after agreeing to an increased $2 billion loan, bankers close to the borrower said.  "On an annual basis, depending on what's going on, Rosneft's financing need is anywhere from $15...

... Kommunisticheskaya Ulitsa), easily visible from any point on the embankment, deserves a visit. It takes only a 15-minute walk from the Lover's Bridge to transport you back to the 18th century, with bells tolling and monks hustling about in traditional garb lending to an atmosphere of the tranquility of pre-revolutionary Russia. If you have the family along, you can also slow down and enjoy amusement park rides in the city park. The park is like a permanent fair, complete with cotton candy and pony rides...

... Utility tariff hikes have been delayed until after the March 4 presidential election. The International Monetary Fund predicted on Jan. 26 that the 2012 inflation figure would be 6.4 percent. The Central Bank is also resisting calls from the country's lending giants, VTB and Sberbank, to address what they characterize as a dearth of liquidity in the financial sector. U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs identified the possible inability "of the [Central Bank] to stick to its monetary policy strategy...

... energy-rich Central Asian nation, but the all-powerful incumbent's victory is so predictable his opponents are praising him. State control is absolute in Turkmenistan, a former Soviet state, and the involvement of multiple candidates appears designed to lend a faint democratic veneer to the Feb. 12 vote. The registration period, which officially ended Wednesday, saw an original 15 candidates whittled down after two applicants withdrew and a further five couldn't produce required documentation. Those...

... Wall Street Journal published Monday that he also had concerns about the availability of money to service debt. "There's definitely not enough liquidity to continue the growth of the banking sector," he said. "The Central Bank is now lending some money to banks, but mainly using some of the collateralized schemes," he added. "I don't think that's enough to provide enough liquidity." HSBC chief economist Alexander Morozov told The Moscow Times that the best way to prevent...

... pay for all the stranded clients, spokesman Vladimir Kleimyonov said at a meeting with the tourism agency Saturday, Kommersant reported . Lanta-Tur Voyage president Lyudmila Puchkova said her company collapsed after Master-Bank refused to continue lending it money, Kommersant said. Yegor Altman, an adviser to the bank's chairman of the board, told The Moscow Times that Master-Bank was not the tour operator's only creditor, but declined to comment further. Calls to the tour operator's office on...

... said all levels of law enforcement know the extent of raiding and fail to act against it. "Without local government resources, raiding is, of course, not possible," Panfilova said. In the committee's view, raiding has increased, especially as lending conflicts became more frequent during the financial crisis. The report says that "in the past three years, this broad practice has been building up in conjunction with conflicts between banks and debt holders." The conflict between state-owned...

... seeking to trim price growth to 6 percent in 2012. Magnit, the country's largest food retailer by market value, was among the companies that benefited from the surge, posting a 20 percent gain in net income last year. "Domestic demand rose thanks to lending growth, the pre-New Year's mood and higher incomes toward the end of the year," Ksenia Yudayeva, chief economist at Sberbank, said Monday by e-mail. The International Monetary Fund on Jan. 24 cut its forecast for Russian growth to 3.3 percent...

... this in their construction of their own ice hotel, which appeared to be the most popular feature of the festival. Many people relaxed at the bar, while the large double ice bed played host to posing women festooned in fur coats. The hotel architects lend the coats free of charge, in order for the visitors to have enough time for a full Russian-style photo shoot without freezing into part of the display themselves. For the same reason, all the seating is covered in cushions. The organizers say there...

... "Faustian Civilization" have been a recurrent topic for intellectuals. The current crises in the United States and Europe — the result primarily of U.S. capitalism's inherent ethical failures and of Europe's dysfunction — might be seen as lending credibility to Spengler's view of democracy's inadequacy. It also speaks to Spengler's dismissal of Western civilization as essentially being driven by a corrupting lust for money. But determinism in history has always been defeated by the unpredictable...

... After all, corporate borrowers do not borrow at the "risk-free" yield of, say, U.S. Treasury bonds. What's more, evidence shows that monetary expansion can push down the interest rate on government debt but have hardly any effect on new bank lending to firms or households. In fact, the causality is the reverse. The reason why government interest rates in Britain and elsewhere are so low is that interest rates for private-sector loans are so high. As with "the specter of communism"...

... democracy. Prokhorov, speaking in an interview, said Russians had shaken off a post-Soviet apathy and were now “just crazy about politics.” He also denied accusations that he was a Kremlin tool, let into the race to split the opposition and lend democratic legitimacy to a vote that Putin seems almost certain to win. Putin is seeking to return to the Kremlin and rule until at least 2018, but protests against alleged fraud in the Dec. 4 State Duma vote have exposed growing discontent with...

... traditionally served as its backbone, VTB has been pushing to expand its base of depositors by making inroads into the retail-banking market. Crisis Brings Boom The 2008 economic crisis was a watershed moment for the bank when, along with other state lending institutions, it received massive financial assistance from the Russian taxpayer. "A crisis is always an opportunity for us," Petelina told The Moscow Times. "If you look at history, you will see that Russian state banks have always...