REF is Russia's leading big business conference. Everybody who is anyone is there which means that the best attended event is coffee. It may also have something to do with the fact that Russians are not great at listening to what others have to say. I had intended to try to blog the sessions that I attended. Power sockets were slightly rarer than rocking horse shit and there was not a WiFi connection to be had for love nor money. So instead here is this consolidated impression and some specific thoughts on the technology session in another post.
My leading and most useless observation impression is that Russian presenters have improved little over the preceding 10 years. Lack of structure, verboseness and irrelevance were the hallmark of the majority of the speeches from Russian presenters. My second impression is the overwhelming negativity of the majority of the Russian participants. Maybe the only happy guys at the whole event were the money managers; Bill Browder of Hermitage Capital winning the award for most overwhelming positive speech (paraphrased - the things that the press worries about are overblown from a stock market perspective). Boris Fyodorov, Honorary Chairman of UFG, a Russian investment bank, and a board member at Gazprom definitely won most logically optimistic speech (paraphrased - things have been a lot worse and are actually pretty good right now; GDP growth, budget surplus etc.)
Sitting somewhere in the middle was Bob Dudley, CEO at TNK-BP, who told a story of substantial investment in the opportunity that is natural resource exploitation in Russia but worried that the business climate was getting worse and worse. Brian Gilbertson, formerly CEO at BHP-Billiton, and now CEO at SUAL did not really touch on the business environment. However, his subsequent statements to the press where he stated that SUAL would probably not seek a London listing because the Russian government did not look kindly on foreigners owning strategic reserves spoke volumes for what he really thought.
At the far end of the spectrum Misha "2%" Kasyanov, Andei Illiaronov and Boris Nemtsov launched in to a blistering attack on the government. The theme of all three was effectively the same; lack of continuing reform is really hurting economic progress. Misha "2%" in his "I'm standing for President in 2008" speech extended the criticism to every element of society. He may have a point, in fact he probably has a very strong point. However if the best that big business can muster to force a quasi-democratic discussion with those inside the Kremlin is a man whose moniker is 2% then we probably should not be holding our breath for a non-Putin blessed successor in 2008. I am assuming that the political world knows that there is little chance of beating Putin's anointed successor so rather than be damned in the process of failing they will put up a candidate who has no chance of winning anyway.
It does however illustrate the paucity of the level and purpose of the debate. The Russian businessmen presenting were all beneficiaries of "loans for shares." LFS was a bribe to big business in 1996 to get Yeltsin out of an electoral hole. Having succeeded the Government would like its economy back. To the extent that they are improving Russian business it is in their hiring of western businessman to run their cheaply-acquired assets. The concentration of assets in the hands of a few men (22 people control 40% of the economy) makes them a political liability and the means by which they acquired their wealth does not make them natural allies of the clean-hands school of business.
Not a single senior member of the Government or Presidential administration turned up. Apparently it was because Kasyanov was due to speak in a key note speech. It is a mark of their failure to understand that debate can be beneficial to policy that only lends credence to the criticism that they are not much better than a bunch of 5th Directorate Thugs.
After all is said is done it was great to catch up with guys who have been playing Russia for a while.
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13 April 2005
Thoughts From the Russian Economic Forum
REF is Russia's leading big business conference. Everybody who is anyone is there which means that the best attended event is coffee. It may also have something to do with the fact that Russians are not great at listening to what others have to say. I had intended to try to blog the sessions that I attended. Power sockets were slightly rarer than rocking horse shit and there was not a WiFi connection to be had for love nor money. So instead here is this consolidated impression and some specific thoughts on the technology session in another post.
My leading and most useless observation impression is that Russian presenters have improved little over the preceding 10 years. Lack of structure, verboseness and irrelevance were the hallmark of the majority of the speeches from Russian presenters. My second impression is the overwhelming negativity of the majority of the Russian participants. Maybe the only happy guys at the whole event were the money managers; Bill Browder of Hermitage Capital winning the award for most overwhelming positive speech (paraphrased - the things that the press worries about are overblown from a stock market perspective). Boris Fyodorov, Honorary Chairman of UFG, a Russian investment bank, and a board member at Gazprom definitely won most logically optimistic speech (paraphrased - things have been a lot worse and are actually pretty good right now; GDP growth, budget surplus etc.)
Sitting somewhere in the middle was Bob Dudley, CEO at TNK-BP, who told a story of substantial investment in the opportunity that is natural resource exploitation in Russia but worried that the business climate was getting worse and worse. Brian Gilbertson, formerly CEO at BHP-Billiton, and now CEO at SUAL did not really touch on the business environment. However, his subsequent statements to the press where he stated that SUAL would probably not seek a London listing because the Russian government did not look kindly on foreigners owning strategic reserves spoke volumes for what he really thought.
At the far end of the spectrum Misha "2%" Kasyanov, Andei Illiaronov and Boris Nemtsov launched in to a blistering attack on the government. The theme of all three was effectively the same; lack of continuing reform is really hurting economic progress. Misha "2%" in his "I'm standing for President in 2008" speech extended the criticism to every element of society. He may have a point, in fact he probably has a very strong point. However if the best that big business can muster to force a quasi-democratic discussion with those inside the Kremlin is a man whose moniker is 2% then we probably should not be holding our breath for a non-Putin blessed successor in 2008. I am assuming that the political world knows that there is little chance of beating Putin's anointed successor so rather than be damned in the process of failing they will put up a candidate who has no chance of winning anyway.
It does however illustrate the paucity of the level and purpose of the debate. The Russian businessmen presenting were all beneficiaries of "loans for shares." LFS was a bribe to big business in 1996 to get Yeltsin out of an electoral hole. Having succeeded the Government would like its economy back. To the extent that they are improving Russian business it is in their hiring of western businessman to run their cheaply-acquired assets. The concentration of assets in the hands of a few men (22 people control 40% of the economy) makes them a political liability and the means by which they acquired their wealth does not make them natural allies of the clean-hands school of business.
Not a single senior member of the Government or Presidential administration turned up. Apparently it was because Kasyanov was due to speak in a key note speech. It is a mark of their failure to understand that debate can be beneficial to policy that only lends credence to the criticism that they are not much better than a bunch of 5th Directorate Thugs.
After all is said is done it was great to catch up with guys who have been playing Russia for a while.
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