Steel tycoons top a list of Russia's super-rich

BBC News - Steel tycoons top a list of Russia's super-rich: "Two steel tycoons have kept the top two positions in the 2011 list of Russia's richest people from Finans magazine.
NLMK owner Vladimir Lisin, who topped the list, has seen his wealth rise by $9.5bn to $28.3bn (£17.7bn), thanks largely to rising metal prices.
Mikhail Prokhorov of Onexim Group was in second place. Alisher Usmanov, an Arsenal Football Club shareholder, jumped four positions to third.
The number of US-dollar billionaires also rose to 114 from 77 in a year.

Russia's top pyramid schemer makes comeback

Russia's top pyramid schemer makes comeback - The Vancouver Sun: "The man who created the biggest pyramid scheme in Russia's history announced Monday that he was making a comeback with a new investment vehicle that brings in monthly returns of 20 to 30 percent.
Sergei Mavrodi said in a message on his website that he was creating an international 'financial network' called MMM-2011 - with the three Russian letters standing for 'we can do anything.'
'You all know my situation. I do not have the right to perform any transactions with any valuables - with any sorts of securities,' the man who created the original MMM investment pyramid in 1994 said in the video message.

BP signs deal with Russian oil giant

BP signs deal with Russian oil giant - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): "Oil company BP has signed a joint venture with Russia's state-run energy giant Rosneft to exploit potentially huge deposits of oil and gas in the country's Arctic region.
Scientists estimate there are five billion tonnes of oil and 10 trillion cubic metres of natural gas under the sea of the northern coast of Siberia.
The agreement means that BP and the Russian state-controlled oil giant will exploit those reserves together, if they exist."

Russian investment firm sees U.S. as land of business opportunity

Russian investment firm sees U.S. as land of business opportunity - Chicago Tribune: "Russian Internet investment company Digital Sky Technologies is gobbling up stakes in such private U.S. firms as social networking site Facebook and Chicago-based daily-deal site Groupon.
The latest investment came with news that Facebook has raised $500 million. When the deal shakes out, Goldman Sachs is expected to have $375 million invested and Digital Sky $125 million, adding to Digital Sky's investment of $200 million in 2009.
Moscow-based Digital Sky Technologies is the investment arm of Mail.ru, the largest Internet company in the Russian-speaking world. Mail.ru owns mostly e-mail, social networking and gaming sites. Holdings include Russian e-mail and gambling Web site Mail.ru and the ICQ instant-messaging system it bought from AOL. It owns one-third of Russia's largest social networking site, vKontakte."

PepsiCo's Russia deal gets initial nod of approval

AFP: PepsiCo's Russia deal gets initial nod of approval: "MOSCOW — PepsiCo's biggest acquisition outside the United States made progress on Monday when the head of Russia's anti-monopoly service said the unit looked favourably on the US company's takeover of a major local firm.
PepsiCo on December 2 agreed to pay 5.4 billion dollars (4.1 billion euros) for Wimm-Bill-Dann, Russia's largest dairy and baby food producer and number three juice maker.
The takeover would be one of the biggest outside the Russian energy sector and enable PepsiCo to become not only the country's largest food-and-beverage business but also to expand further into eastern Europe and the former Soviet states."

BNP Leads Lending Push in Russia

East Europe Day Ahead: BNP Leads Lending Push in Russia - Bloomberg: "International banks led by BNP Paribas SA are lending the most in Russia since 2008, turning to companies in the world’s biggest energy exporting economy for higher returns as loan rates tumble in Europe"

Novartis to Invest $500 Million in Russia

Novartis to Invest $500 Million in Russia - WSJ.com: "ZURICH—-Novartis AG on Monday said it will invest around $500 million in Russia over the next five years amid efforts to better tap into one of the world's fastest growing emerging markets.
As part of its efforts, the pharmaceutical company struck a deal with the city of St. Petersburg to build a new manufacturing plant there and said it wants to spur research and development in the region and improve collaboration with the government."

High-speed trains at World Cup 2018

High-speed train to four Russian cities at World Cup 2018: "ST. PETERSBURG: High-speed trains will run between Moscow, Kazan, Samara and Ulyanovsk for the transportation of football fans during the World Cup-2018, Itar-Tass news agency quoted Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as saying.

Putin, after meeting Finnish President Tarja Halonen recently, said that the high-speed trains are already running between Moscow and St. Petersburg, Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod.

'And now, this high-speed railway lines are to be connect Moscow with Kazan, Samara and Ulyanovsk. This will be a strong impetus for the development of the high-speed train traffic in the European part of Russia,' the Russian news agency cited the Prime Minister as saying.

First Russian Hybrid Car

Russian Billionaire Bets on Hybrid Car Company - NYTimes.com: Mikhail Prokhorov, "the Russian billionaire who bought the New Jersey Nets basketball team, introduced another pet project Monday: a Russian-designed hybrid electric car.

It is called the Yo, for the Russian letter “e,” and can run on gasoline or natural gas. Its backers say it is far more than a state-of-the-art Lada, the boxy and ubiquitous people’s car of the former Soviet Union that is the butt of jokes. The Yo, they claim, taps a number of Russian engineering breakthroughs that had not formerly been commercialized.
The designers claim that at about 67 miles a gallon, or 3.5 liters per 100 kilometers, the Yo will achieve better fuel economy than the Toyota Prius, in part because it is lighter. They claim that, like other hybrids, the Yo will have a range far beyond that of a pure plug-in electrical car, like the Nissan Leaf."