Today in Russian Business – April 15, 2010

Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov says Russia is in no hurry to remove the high import tariffs it imposed last year.  Rusal has awarded chief executive Oleg Deripaska a stock bonus worth $62 million for helping it sell shares in Hong Kong: ‘Investors will be fairly disappointed considering they are still underwater in their investment […] investors don’t generally appreciate rewarding executives for IPOs.‘  Deripaska’s $10 million salary comes in addition to the bonus.  The company is optimistic that high aluminum stocks will meet growing global demand and a surge in prices.  Mobile phone operator VimpelCom’s merger with Kyivstar has yet to go through, but should be finalized within a week, while shareholders were given until today to exchange their stock for shares.  A VTB analyst estimates that as many as five ‘first-tier’ Russian companies could follow Rusal’s Hong Kong IPO: ‘Apart from Russian natural resources players, which are the primary interest of Asian investors, it will be quite challenging to offer anything else that Asian funds are keen to invest in at this stage.‘ Hewlett-Packard’s Russian officers are being raided in a multi-million dollar bribery probe by German prosecutors.