According to Bloomberg, Russia will soon recommence asset sales to offset its first budget deficit in ten years.  Russian Railways head Vladimir Yakunin told the Reuters Russia Investment Summit that the state will need an even bigger role in financial affairs because of the economic crisis.  Mikhail Gorbachev has criticized Vladimir Putin for not using the boom years of flowing petrodollars to modernize the economy.  Rusal's Libya excursion was apparently an attempt to sell 10% of the company to the Libyan Investment Authority.  The Moscow Times has an op-ed piece on the perils of being a small business in Russia.  Tagaz has denied that it stole the technological design of the Chevrolet Lacetti to make its own equivalent sedan.  In August retail sales declined by 9.8%, the sharpest drop in ten years.  The biggest maker ...

Norilsk Nickel shareholders have voted to invite a state representative, Vasily Titov, deputy chairman of state-run VTB Group, to their board, to give the company additional support during the crisis.  Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin has recommended the government consider nationalization of crisis-hit industries to alleviate social tensions.  Four minority shareholders of High River Gold Mines have asked the company to reject Severstal's offer of 19 US cents per share, saying that the Russian steelmaker should raise the bid fivefold.  GAZ Group, the main employer in the Nizhny Novgorod region, will make around 6,500 people from its main production site redundant.  A high-ranking executive at ratings agency Fitch says that Russian banks will need $20 billion to $80 billion in extra capital this year.  The Magna-Opel deal is said to be in jeopardy as GM Europe ...

by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /According to Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach last week, Russia's economy shrank by 7 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2009, a staggering turnaround for an economy which has just enjoyed eight years of solid oil-fueled growth.br /br /"These figures are worse than we expected," Klepach said at a press conference in Kiev,citing preliminary figures. Klepach also stated that net capital outflows reached $33 billion in the first quarter of 2009, following record outflows of $130 billion in the second half of last year.br /br /pa href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SdsTJmo57XI/AAAAAAAANbI/gYR1beR2NiI/s1600-h/russia+gdp.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321868440380239218" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 229px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SdsTJmo57XI/AAAAAAAANbI/gYR1beR2NiI/s400/russia+gdp.png" border="0" //abr /br /The Russian State Statistics Service have also released official gross domestic product figures for the fourth quarter of 2008. GDP was up 1.2 percent year on year, the worst reading for any quarter since ...