VTB has raised its share in Bank of Moscow to a controlling stake, and Suleiman Kerimov has joined VTB as a shareholder by buying 3.88 percent of its stock from Goldman Sachs.

Inteko president Yelena Baturina on Saturday discussed the sale of assets to Vasily Anisimov's real estate holding Coalco, but the meeting was brief because the two billionaires could not agree on a price, sources close to both sides told Vedomosti.

Executives of TNK-BP and gas trader Itera are discussing a deal in which the oil company may acquire a stake of up to 50 percent in Itera, TNK and Itera sources said.

Wendy's, the world's third-largest fast-food chain, is planning to enter the Russian market in 2011. Mikhail Zelman's Food Service Capital is in talks with the U.S. company about purchasing franchising rights, Vedomosti reported.

Suleiman Kerimov, co-owner of potash producer Uralkali, recently met with Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and offered to buy a controlling stake in Belaruskali from the state, said a source close to one of Uralkali's shareholders.

Billionaire Suleiman Kerimov asked for government permission to purchase Dmitry Rybolovlev's entire 63.2 percent stake Uralkali. But a spokesman said it was an error and that Kerimov only wanted the 25 percent he had bought.

Yekaterina Ignatova, wife of Russian Technologies chief Sergei Chemezov, could become a partner of billionaires Mikhail Prokhorov, Alexander Abramov, Viktor Vekselberg and Suleiman Kerimov in MFK Bank, Vedomosti has learned.

Michael Cherney, also known as Mikhail Chernoi, said accusations of money laundering were engineered by Oleg Deripaska, with whom Cherney has an ongoing dispute over a stake in United Company RusAl.

The developer’s founders are left with a combined 33 percent stake after the billionaire acquired shares through debt.

The Center for Investment Projects and Programs wants to remold the defunct ZiL truck plant in Moscow into a Mecca for small businesses.

City Hall has begun bankruptcy proceedings against the comatose Moskvich car factory in a push to attract investment that could breathe new life into the facility.

Interior Ministry investigators have raided Oleg Deripaska's Base Element and Russian Aluminum offices, confiscating documents as part of an ongoing investigation initiated by Deripaska adversary Andrei Andreyev, who claims the oligarch stole his assets.

AvtoVAZ's planned layoff of 12,000 workers would be one of the largest in Russia's corporate history.

Russian Aluminum is currently playing musical chairs with the general directors of its main factories.

Alexei Mordashov, head of metals giant Severstal, has decided to break his multi-faceted, $2.5 billion empire into three branches by the end of the year.

Oleg Deripaska is planning a makeover for his SibAl empire which will likely be called Base Element.

A French court has rejected Russian demands to extradite Mikhail Zhivilo, who has been accused of participating in a plot to assassinate the governor of the Kemerovo region.

A prestigious financial roundtable kicked off in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday with only one of the 2,000 or so invited luminaries declared personal non grata.

A deal appears to have been struck between Oleg Deripaska, head of metals giant Siberian Aluminum, and Nikolai Pugin, head of the nation's No. 2 automaker GAZ.

The Trustconsult group will leave the recently formed No. 2 aluminum giant SUAL-Holding after selling its assets to its partner company, Renova, for an undisclosed sum. Trustconsult and companies aligned with it owned the shares of the Bogoslovsk smelter, which is located in the Ural Mountains, and the Kandalaksha smelter in the Murmansk region, the Kamensk-Urals and Mikhailov metallurgical factories and two cable factories. Renova, an Alfa Group affiliate, owns the Irkutsk and Urals smelters, which are part of SUAL, the Timan and Southern Urals bauxite mines and the Urals silicon factory. The companies ran a number of enterprises jointly. SUAL-Holding controls more than 15 percent of the nation’s aluminum market and about 40 percent of the country’s alumina output. It manages the coveted Sredne-Timansk bauxite mine, which is developing the largest deposit of raw materials for the aluminum industry in the country, Interfax reported.

Siberian Aluminum seems set to sign a social and economic partnership agreement with the Moscow city government.

Severstal confirmed Thursday it had purchased a block of shares in the Ulyanov Automobile Factory.

MIKOM has sold a 66 percent stake in the Novokuznetsk aluminum smelter to Grigory Luchansky.

The Siberian Aluminum Group has purchased the Pavlovsky Plant in the Nizhegorod region, which specializes in the manufacture of city buses.