Rusal trebles profits after bumper year March 31, 2011 RUSAL, the world’s top aluminium maker, said its 2010 net profit more than tripled, beating forecasts, and expects strong global demand for the light metal to continue this year. RUSAL shares rose more than four per cent to their highest level in more than a month, outperforming a 0.4 per cent rise in the broader [...]
Petropavlovsk suffers hit from iron ore start-up costs March 31, 2011 RUSSIAN miner Petropavlovsk posted a 10 per cent fall in full-year profit due to start-up costs at its IRC iron ore subsidiary and higher gold production costs. Underlying earnings, before exceptional items including IRC, fell to $205m (£127m), beating the $191m consensus of eight analysts provided by the company. Revenue rose 30 per cent to [...]
Russia’s deputy premier to leave Rosneft chair March 31, 2011 Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has ordered top ministers to quit the boards of major state firms, launching a drive to separate politics from business less than a year before a presidential election. The most prominent target of the shakeout was Igor Sechin, a deputy premier with sweeping control over energy policy who as chairman of [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING March 30, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES CHRISTIAN CANDY TO RESELL GOLD SHARES Christian Candy, the property developer, is to sell shares back to minority investors in a gold mining company after his attempt to take the mine owner private was thwarted. The agreement is part of a deal that could strengthen the rights of small investors. It is set [...]
June IPO planned for SUEK March 30, 2011 RUSSIAN coal giant SUEK is planning a $1bn (£623m) float in London by the end of June, City A.M. has learned. The float is being shopped around some of the world’s biggest investors in commodities during pre-marketing meetings in London, with BlackRock and Renaissance Capital having been approached. The deal, which is being led by [...]
Bribery Act to hit Olympics March 30, 2011 THE BRIBERY Act could hit corporate hospitality bookings at the London 2012 Olympic games, despite assurances that it is not intended to target “genuine” hospitality. In the long-awaited guidance to the Act, released yesterday after a delay of more than two months, the Ministry of Justice sought to reassure companies that “bona fide hospitality…is recognised [...]
BP shares drop on worries of criminal charges for Gulf spill March 29, 2011 BP saw its shares drop 2.2 per cent yesterday after it emerged that executives at the oil major might face criminal charges for their role in last April’s Deepwater Horizon disaster. BP was the biggest faller in the FTSE 100 yesterday, closing at 466.55p. The shares have been under pressure since a tribunal blocked its [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING March 28, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES ICBC HEAD PLAYS DOWN POST-CRISIS LOAN RISK China’s largest bank lent Rmb640bn ($61bn) to local governments in the post-crisis credit boom, but insists these loans do not pose a danger to the country’s banking system. In an interview with the Financial Times, Jiang Jianqing, chairman of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the [...]
Big BP shareholder slams Rosneft deal March 28, 2011 ONE OF BP’s biggest shareholders spoke out against its revised plan to swap shares with Rosneft yesterday. David Cummings, head of UK equities at Standard Life Investments said in an interview: “[T]he logic for doing the £5bn share swap with Rosneft has gone in our view. I mean they’ve just had their joint venture blocked, [...]
Goldman gets off to a slow start in the M&A leagues March 28, 2011 Maybe it just says something about the company I’m keeping but I’ve recently been drawn into countless discussions about the relative underperformance of Goldman Sachs in the latest Thomson Reuters mergers and acquisitions (M&A) rankings. In the worldwide category, Goldman, normally such a predictable M&A machine, slumped from first to fourth. In M&A with a [...]