Today in Russian Business – May 10, 2010

President Obama took the unusual step of expressing preference for a strong dollar in an interview with Russian television’s state-run Channel Rossiy (a job he normally leaves up to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner).  The Eurozone crisis kept both French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi away from the Victory Day parades.  After last week’s tumble, the MICEX looks poised to jump back up, BusinessWeek suggests.  Petropavlovsk plans to spin off its iron ore unit in a Hong Kong listing that could see operations valued at $1.5 billion.  Deripaska’s Strikeforce Mining & Resources Plc, will, according to Bloomberg, delay taking orders for a Hong Kong initial public offering that may raise as much as $200 million.  The billionaire founder of Russneft, Mikhail Gutseriev, has returned to Russia from three years of self-imposed exile after Russian authorities dropped criminal charges against him last month.