A difficult choice It turns out that the fate of UC Rusal will be decided in early June. The company offers creditors to establish a moratorium on payments for two years, and then repay loans at a rate consistent with the growth of aluminum prices on the LME. Not all creditors like this, but UC Rusal's chances are still high.

Yesterday morning, RBC shares on the MICEX soared by 30% to 46.51 rubles per share. Then the price was corrected and by the end of the trading session it was 41.5 rubles (+15.92%). In total, 17.58 million shares were sold for 762.3 million rubles during the day – a record figure since the beginning of 2009.

I once ran a fund that was supposed to compensate investors who had been victimized by unscrupulous financial advisers. We started the job with great enthusiasm. We believed that our job was to strike a delicate balance: maintaining investor confidence in the financial services industry without destroying the incentives for cautious behavior or penalizing those who did. But things soon went badly.

E.Kuzmina Because of the crisis, fewer and fewer Petersburgers are able to travel abroad. In the first quarter of 2008, there were 17.4%, and this year only 12.5%, according to a study by Komkon, which surveyed 661 Petersburg residents in January and February as part of a TGI-Russia study. About a third of those who planned a vacation or trip have abandoned their plans (see diagram).

General Valery Yevtukhovich, who was appointed commander of the Airborne Forces just a year and a half ago, has been dismissed from military service in accordance with a report he submitted, a source in the central office of the Ministry of Defense reported. The official representative of the military department does not comment on the information. The general turned 55 in April, which is the maximum age for service, but the contract could be extended.

The main topic of the informal EU summit in Prague on Friday will be the Nabucco project (from Central Asia bypassing Russia). According to the EU plan, the construction of the gas pipeline will reduce Europe's dependence on Russian raw materials. EU officials emphasize the special status of the event, writes WSJ. Invitations were received by the presidents and prime ministers of Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Turkey.

They ask to correct it The Secretariat of the President of Ukraine believes that the contract for the supply of Russian gas should be amended, said the Ukrainian President's Commissioner for International Energy Security Bohdan Sokolovsky. Russia has not imposed penalties for the shortfall in gas supplies. But if there are no changes to the contract, then "agreements are just agreements," Sokolovsky said.

A. Makhonin JSC "Southern Telecommunications Company" Telecom operator. The main shareholder is Svyazinvest OJSC (51% of shares). Financial indicators (2008, RAS): revenue - 20.883 billion rubles, net profit - 557 million rubles, EBITDA - 6.367 billion rubles. The UTK tender committee has declared the auction for the loan announced on April 13 invalid, the company reported.

Evraz Group Mining and metallurgical holding. Shareholders: main shareholder – Lanebrook Ltd. (Roman Abramovich and his partners, Alexander Abramov, Alexander Frolov) – 76.3%. Revenue (2008) – $20.38 billion, net profit – $1.87 billion, Capitalization (LSE) – $6.25 billion. On April 21 last year, the board of directors of Evraz Group decided to suspend the implementation of the option program for some employees, the company reported in its IFRS report for 2008.

Having declared six months ago that the economic crisis would leave the world with 5-6 global manufacturers, each with sales of at least 5.5 million cars a year, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has taken action. Last week, we saw the first results of this activity: Fiat acquired 20% of the bankrupt American Chrysler (with the possibility of increasing the share to 51%) and entered into negotiations to buy General Motors' European business - Opel/Vauxhall and Saab.

The crisis has caught up with retail trade. In April, the growth of prices for all groups of consumer goods slowed down almost by half, Rosstat reported. Goods and services are becoming more expensive much more slowly than before the crisis: only 0.7% per month. We are far from America and Europe, where prices have been falling for more than 10 months in a row due to the crisis.

In the article “Russian Priority” (No. 81 of 6.05.2009, p. B6), the last name of the Managing Director of Kaspersky Lab in Russia, Sergey Zemkov, is incorrectly indicated. In the article “Optimists from Transaero” (No. 80, 5.05.2009, p.

A. Belousov GAZ Group car manufacturer. The main shareholder is Oleg Deripaska's Russian Machines (61% of shares). Financial indicators (2008, preliminary group data): revenue - 143.1 billion rubles, net loss - 5.2 billion rubles.

The correction failed again: the contradictory movements of the indices, observed the day before both in Russia and around the world, were again replaced by rapid growth. The RTS index rose by 2.93% to 897.1 points yesterday, the MICEX index by 3.04% to 986.12 points. On the MICEX, the growth leaders were Gazprom (+5.34%), Lukoil (+4.12%), and Norilsk Nickel (+4.68%). VTB shares added 2.11%, and Sberbank – 1.77%.

JSC Peterstar fixed-line operator. Founded in 1992. Part of the Synterra group of companies. Financial indicators (RAS, 2008): revenue – 2.8 billion rubles (excluding subsidiaries) net profit – 727.8 million rubles. The revenue of Peterstar CJSC in the first quarter was 645 million rubles, which is 1% more than a year earlier. A year ago, the growth was 14.5%.