Usmanov, Megafon, and Business Diplomacy

Alisher Usmanov is an Uzbek businessman worth $18 billion with somewhat contradictory interests in social media investments and defamation lawsuits.  But this bit from the Financial Times is just sooo good.

“Usmanov is known as a person able to resolve delicate situations to the satisfaction of all the parties,” says Ivan Streshinsky, a long-time associate.

Of course Goldman Sachs ended up pulling out of the Megafon deal.  I studied a great deal of this company’s operations when they allegedly unlawfully annexed a big part of Georgia’s cell phone spectrum months before the war, but perhaps the corporate governance issues go much deeper than that.