Wall Street Journal EuropeBy Jason Corcoran in Moscow 30 October 2008Moscow -- THE LONDON Stock Exchange Group PLC has dropped a plan to open an office in Moscow after the financial crisis wiped out the prospects for Russian stock issuance for at least 12 months.The decision to call off the Moscow office was taken after a group of companies in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States pulled stock listings amid a plunge in stock markets. Until recently, Russia had been seen as a possible source of growth for the larger exchange, which is facing competition from new rivals.Jon Edwards, director of CIS and Central and Eastern Europe at the LSE, said the exchange had given the green light for the opening of a Moscow office before the country's economic crisis began in August. "We pulled plans to open in Moscow ...

I am very grateful for the support of IHT editor Serge Schmemann for the terrible and unjust plight of my client, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The case against and for Khodorkovsky By Serge Schmemann Sunday, October 19, 2008 This month marks five years since Mikhail Khodorkovsky was seized in his private plane at the Novosibirsk airport. He was subsequently convicted of fraud and tax evasion and sentenced to eight years in labor camp, and his oil company, Yukos, was dismantled and sold off to Kremlin loyalists. Now 45, Khodorkovsky was denied parole in August on the grounds that he had not been attending sewing classes at his labor camp in the Russian Far East. Earlier this month, his lawyers said he was put in solitary confinement for 12 days for giving a written interview to the Russian edition of Esquire magazine.

The oil boom in Russia which has produced political power, cash, and a growing upper class -as well as fueled overall Russian economics and the country’s renewed assertiveness in places like Georgia- appears to be shakier than Moscow officials would like to admit.

The reasons behind seeing the potential for disaster in Russian economics as tied to the oil industry are two: Efforts to develop new oil fields have been sluggish to non-existent and since the collapse of Russian economics in 1998, most of the oil produced has come from using advanced technology to re-drill once nearly exhausted fields.

Vary Kryukov, who researches western Siberia oil companies for a government-funded think tank, says the strategy of re-drilling old fields, while not developing new ones is potentially disastrous for Russian economics. “If the situation which exists now stays the same, oil production will start to decline seriously in two years,” Kryukov said in …

Financial NewsJason Corcoran in Moscow23 June 2008 Investment climate is steady as new leader continues reform agenda Russia’s equity markets are enjoying the country’s honeymoon period under its new leadership, but investors remain wary of how the power-sharing arrangement will evolve.The changing of the guard on May 7 saw Vladimir Putin hand over the presidential mantle to his protégé Dmitry Medvedev. Within hours, Medvedev had nominated his mentor Putin as Prime Minister.The smooth choreography proved to be a fillip for Russia’s main stock markets and sparked a buying spree by foreign funds.The MSCI Russia Index was the best performing emerging equity market last month, rising 15.7%, and outperforming the MSCI EM Emea index, which rose 7.3% in the same month. Inflows recorded in the third week of May of $542m (€350m) were the highest in Russia ...