Today in Russian Business – Aug 4, 2008

Russia: “Everything is for sale.” The Telegraph argues that the influence of Russian businessmen and billionaires in London is underestimated. Pirelli and Rostekhnologhii have reached an agreement to build a tyre plant at Togliatti in Russia. Russia’s state-run defense industry “faces a crumbling manufacturing base and pervasive corruption; they have produced little advanced armament in the Putin era.” Diamond producer Alrosa sold more than $31 million worth of diamonds at an international auction. Read an interview with investment manager William Browder, recently “chased out of Russia”. On a Russian court’s attempt to use a US law in the Bank of New York Mellon case. Goldman Sachs bought Pokrovsky Hills, an elite townhouse neighborhood in northwest Moscow, from AIG and Deutsche Bank for a price estimated at $350 million to $450 million.