Back in August, 2007, we were doing quite a lot of blogging about the shareholding arrangement between the large Canadian auto parts manufacturer and Oleg Deripaska’s Russian Machines – a business arrangement which generated a lot of speculation of potential future intervention by the Russian government (Deripaska has gone on record to say that if Putin ever wanted to take over part of his company, there would be no resistance). At the end of this week, however, things weren’t looking so great for the Russian move into Canada – the financial crisis has forced Deripaska to sell off his Magna share in order to pay off the accumulating debt. This one comes from the Financial Times:

Oleg Deripaska became the first Russian oligarch to be publicly hit by the global financial crisis yesterday after he was forced to divest his 20 per cent stake in Magna International, the Canadian car parts maker, to creditors.