Today in Russian Business – September 25, 2009

The Moscow Times suggests that Russia will be consigned to the sidelines in today’s  G20 meeting to discuss creating a global financial architecture, as, for all of its riches, the country lags behind in industrial development.  With all of the legal and financial perils of investing in Russia – why does it still attract as many companies as it does? asks Business Week.  After being threatened with bankruptcy, Rusal apparently repaid debts worth $85.9 million to Alfa-Bank.  A delegation of Russian lobbyists intends to encourage US investors to invest in small-scale construction and timber in exchange for help in entering the Russian market.  Sberbank has acquired a ‘golden share’ in the search engine Yandex.  Moscow ranks 67th out of 75 world financial centers, just below Manila, Prague and Lisbon, according to a new report.  Bloomberg examines the rise of Mikhail Prokhorov in tandem with the warming of relations between Russia and the US: ‘it’s some well-timed basketball diplomacy that will certainly help the atmospherics’, says one analyst.  The Russian government would like to see Russian companies settle their disputes in Russian courts, rather than in London, where many of them find their financing, deputy justice minister Yuri Liubimov has said.