SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1536 (98), Friday, December 18, 2009
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TITLE: City’s Clubs Blacklisted Following Fire Checks
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Twenty-six local nightclubs, cafes and restaurants were put on a blacklist by the Ministry of Emergency Situations due to fire safety regulations on Wednesday.
The nationwide campaign to inspect clubs and other venues was launched after a deadly fire at a nightclub in Perm. Caused by sparks from a firework show, the Dec. 5 fire left 149 dead and 80 injured, Interfax reported on Thursday.
“Unfettered freedom for nightclubs has ended — as well as for other entertainment businesses,” St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko was quoted by Interfax as saying on Dec. 8. She said every venue would go through a thorough fire safety check in the next six to eight weeks.
Mass violations have already been exposed as the prosecutor’s office and fire inspectorate conduct dozens of checks every day, but so far only 26 venues have been blacklisted by the Ministry of Emergency Situations, which posted a document titled “Black List of Nightclubs, Discos and Restaurants” on its local web site.
Although most of them are obscure local venues, some well-known clubs such as the live music venue Glavclub, techno bunker club Tunnel and Central Station, the city’s leading gay club, were blacklisted as well.
Most of the blacklisted clubs continued to operate on Thursday, however. Glavclub will host a concert by Swedish metal band Dark Tranquillity [sic] on Saturday before taking a break until Jan. 2, the club’s press officer Alexandra Parpluts said Thursday.
Although a concert by British veteran electronic band The Orb, which was due to perform at Glavclub on Sunday, was cancelled, Parpluts said the cancelation was caused by different, “technical” reasons. She did not elaborate.
Central Station was also operating while improving its fire alarm and fixing other defects identified during the inspection, a club employee who did not give his name said by phone Thursday.
Mass violations discovered by fire inspectors during the current campaign indicate that many venues have been operating without following fire regulations for years, ever since the first nightclubs emerged in the city in the early 1990s.
A local club manager who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the practice was nationwide and reflected Russia’s total corruption. “Because everything can be bought, many problems are dealt with as they arise,” he said.
According to him, only a few of the wealthiest local nightclubs could afford to comply with the fire prevention regulations, which include more than 100 requirements. To comply, the clubs would have to order an expensive expert report and not use the premises for commercial purposes during the licensing process, which can take up to six months, while continuing to pay rent to the owner of the premises.
The rest chose to bribe fire inspectors so that they would turn a blind eye to the violations, he said.
The sum of the bribe depended on the number of violations. The minimal bribe, paid if only a few minor violations were found, was about 10,000 rubles ($330), he said. The bribe had to be paid again during routine inspections that took place approximately once a year.
“Some clubs bribed fire inspectors before they opened, and some opened without any inspections and came to an agreement with fire inspectors only when they visited the venue,” he said. According to him, there are clubs operating that the fire inspectors simply do not know about.
“Some opened without even suspecting they needed a fire prevention and hygiene certificate — if they sat quiet, without holding high-profile concerts and posting posters, they could only be spotted by pure chance,” he said.
TITLE: Memorial Gets EU Human Rights Award
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STRASBOURG, France — Three Russian activists received the European Union’s top human rights award Wednesday in recognition of the difficult conditions that they face at home.
Kremlin critics Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Sergei Kovalyov and Oleg Orlov accepted the Sakharov Prize at the legislature of the 27-nation EU on behalf of the human rights organization Memorial.
European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek said that despite the pride he felt for Memorial he also was left with “bitterness that it is necessary to award this kind of prize in Europe.”
The three activists entered the legislature to applause and a spontaneous standing ovation. Minutes later Kovalyov asked the lawmakers to rise again, this time in memory of slain Russian activists like Natalya Estemirova, a Memorial activist in Chechnya who was abducted and killed in July.
“It is Europe’s duty not to remain silent” in the face of Russian human rights abuses, Kovalyov said during a 20-minute speech.
Human rights activists and journalists who work with Memorial have been threatened, beaten and in some cases killed in recent years.
“I hope that this prize will encourage them to continue the fight for what we all believe in — freedom and democracy,” said Joseph Daul, chairman of the Christian Democrat EPP, the biggest group in the legislature.
Alexeyeva, 82, and Kovalyov, 79, were both leading Soviet dissidents and have continued to lead the fight for democracy and human rights in Russia.
Alexeyeva and Kovalyov shared the Olof Palme Prize in 2004 with Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who exposed corruption and rights abuses in Chechnya before she was killed in Moscow in 2006.
“Their killers have yet to be brought to justice,” Buzek said while speaking about Politkovskaya and Estemirova.
Kovalyov, who spent seven years in the gulag, was unyielding in his criticism of the new Russia, where many of the democratic achievements of the 1990s have been rolled back.
Kovalyov and Alexeyeva are contemporaries of the late Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet dissident for whom the prize is named.
The Sakharov Prize is considered the EU’s top rights award and comes with a 50,000 euro ($72,850) honorarium.
The prize has been awarded since 1988, and previous winners include former South African President Nelson Mandela, East Timorese leader Xanana Gusmao and Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya.
Often the prize has chilled relations with the government of the recipient’s country. Last year, China’s government reacted angrily when the jailed dissident Hu Jia won. Beijing called him a criminal and said the Sakharov award amounted to political interference.
TITLE: Retail Bill Passes Key Hurdle
In Duma
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The State Duma on Wednesday passed in a key second reading a controversial law on retail trade that caused a rare split between the government and the Kremlin.
Retailers have said the bill, which was proposed by the government, will give unfair advantages to producers and suppliers and cause prices on many goods to rise.
The bill will come into force as early as Feb. 1 and introduce strict regulations on retailers, including a shortened period of payment for delivered goods, possible limits on retail prices and a cap on stores’ retail margins.
Under the bill, the government will be allowed to set prices for certain kinds of goods for a period of 90 days if prices have jumped by more than 30 percent within the previous 30 days.
The legislation will also restrict retail chains from acquiring stores if the acquisition would cause their market share in the region to exceed 25 percent.
In addition, retailers will be prohibited from charging suppliers extra fees, except for a premium of 10 percent on food items. Currently, suppliers are often charged extra fees in order to have their goods sold in large retail chains and put in places of high visibility.
But these fees, which retailers call bonuses, are likely to remain and take a different form.
“Even if bonuses are banned, retailers will find a way to replace them with something else in order to boost competition among suppliers,” said Yekaterina Loshchakova, an analyst at Financial Bridge brokerage.
But that something might involve finding new suppliers, Ilya Belonovsky, head of the Association of Retail Trade Companies, told Interfax.
“As a result [of the bill], large, foreign suppliers will be able to get around the limitations. It will be harder for small producers to convince retailers that their goods are better,” he said.
The legislation presages a dramatic shakeup on the market.
“Suppliers will have to come to an agreement with retailers even after the law comes into force,” said Andrei Kondratyukin, head of the franchising program at Kopeika, one of Russia’s largest retail chains.
“The agreements will remain, but the form of the relationships between retailers and suppliers will change in order to be compatible with the new legislation,” Kondratyukin said.
Producers echoed the sentiment. “The relationships between retailers and suppliers will take new forms,” said Marina Kagan, a spokeswoman for Wimm-Bill-Dann dairy company.
TITLE: Suicide Bomber Attacks Policemen, Kills 1
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NAZRAN, Russia — A suicide car bomber struck a group of policemen in Russia’s restive North Causasus on Thursday, killing himself and one other, and wounding at least 15 officers and two civilians, officials said.
The bomber attacked the group of policemen at a checkpoint in the city of Nazran in the province of Ingushetia, said Madina Khadziyeva, a spokeswoman for the Russian Interior Ministry’s branch in the province. Ingushetia neighbors Chechnya to the west.
The explosion wounded several officers and two civilians, many of whom are in critical condition, said Svetlana Gorbakova of Russia’s top investigative body.
There have been a series of suicide attacks in the region and other violence stemming from two separatist wars in Chechnya over the last 15 years. Ingushetia’s regional president was badly wounded in a suicide attack in June and a suicide bombing of a police station in August killed at least 24 people.
Rights activists say that widespread abuses against civilians by police and security forces have contributed to swelling the ranks of militants.
In the province of Dagestan, police killed three suspected militants in a clash late Wednesday, said Mark Tolchinsky, a spokesman for the regional Interior Ministry’s branch.
TITLE: Sapsan High-Speed Train Launched
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A new high-speed train, the Sapsan, was due to make its first journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg on Thursday evening.
From Friday, the trains will run between the two cities three times a day, leaving both cities at 6.45 a.m., 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. The morning and evening trips will take three hours and 45 minutes, while the afternoon train will take four hours and 45 minutes due to additional stops at Okulovka, Bologoye, Vyshny Volochyok and Tver, Russian Railways said.
Sapsan, which takes its name from the Russian word for the world’s fastest bird, the peregrine falcon, is a high-speed Velaro Rus train manufactured by Siemens Transport Systems. It can reach speeds of up to 250 kilometers per hour.
The price of a journey on the Sapsan between St. Petersburg and Moscow will be from 2,400 to 2,900 rubles ($79 to $95) in second-class cars, and 5,000 to 6,000 rubles ($164 to $197) in first-class cars.
Due to the launch of the Sapsan, the two other daytime trains that used to run between St. Petersburg and Moscow will be canceled. From Friday, the Yunost and Nevsky Express trains will not run. The Sapsan will also replace the R-200 train, which used to run between the two cities at 6.45 a.m.
The only other daytime train remaining will be the Avrora, which leaves at 4 p.m.
Russian Railways signed a contract with Siemens Transport Systems for the order of eight trains in May 2006 at a cost of $398 million. In April 2007, they signed an agreement for the technical service of the trains for 30 years at a cost of $506 million.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Fire Kills Six
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Four adults and two children were killed in a fire that broke out in an apartment building on Ulitsa Kolokolnaya early Tuesday morning. Eight people were hospitalized. Experts say the fire marked the highest number of fire victims in St. Petersburg since 2007.
Among those hospitalized were an eight-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy who were both suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning.
The fire broke out at about 3.30 a.m. in a five-room communal apartment inhabited by three families on the fourth floor. That apartment and the two located above it suffered most of all, the Fontanka.ru news service reported.
City authorities will provide the residents of the damaged apartments with temporary accommodation and the building itself will be repaired, Business News Agency reported.
The fire is believed to have been caused by negligence.
In recent days, St. Petersburg, like many other cities in Russia, has witnessed an increase in the number of fires. In the Dec. 11 to 13 period, the city was hit by 40 fires, in which four people died and five were injured. This increase in the number of fires coincided with sudden drops in temperatures across the country, leading to people using additional radiators and other heating devices.
Pamphlet Seized
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The entire print run of a pamphlet analyzing the performance of St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko since she took office in 2003 was seized in the city this week.
Called “Valentina Matviyenko. The Results,” the report was written by Olga Kurnosova, the local leader of Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front (OGF) and a coordinator of the Solidarity democratic movement.
Speaking on Thursday, Kurnosova said the car in which the pamphlets were being transported to St. Petersburg was stopped by plainclothes officers, who seized 10,000 copies at 6 a.m. on Monday.
Following “Yury Luzhkov. The Results,” a report written by Solidarity co-leader Boris Nemtsov about the Moscow mayor in September, Kurnosova’s work was critical of Matviyenko’s activities and was intended for free distribution near metro stations.
“In my view, the results are quite sad — that applies to every sphere of the life in the city, from the destruction of its architectural appearance to the public transport situation and social sphere. There are a lot of figures in the report,” Kurnosova said.
Animals Seek Homes
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Under the slogan “I want to go home,” 50 cats and 100 dogs will be housed for one day at the Loft Project Etazhi art center as part of an unique, free-of-charge installation that the organizers hope will help to find new owners for the animals.
The event will take place on Sunday from 12 p.m. until 8 p.m. in the Siny Pol gallery on the second floor of the art center. Cats and dogs will be brought from four animal shelters around the city: Rzhevka, Poteryashka (Lost,) Noev Kovcheg (Noah’s Arc) and Drug (Friend.) Visitors can choose a new pet to take home, or help the shelters by bringing food and bedding.
The last two “I want to go home” projects have successfully provided 27 dogs and 65 cats with new homes.
TITLE: Architect of Market Reforms Yegor Gaidar Dies, 53
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Yegor Gaidar, the mastermind of Russia’s transition to a free economy that began with painful price shocks in the early 1990s, died Wednesday at the age of 53.
Gaidar died of a blood clot at 3 a.m. as he was working on a new book at his home outside Moscow, said Yelena Lopatina, a spokeswoman for the Institute of Economy in Transition, a think tank that Gaidar established and headed.
President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and dozens of other politicians showered Gaidar with praise Wednesday, even though they had largely ignored him and his economic advice in recent years. One of his last ideas embraced by the Kremlin was the creation of a stabilization fund to collect oil windfalls — a fund that the government is now using to ride out the economic crisis.
“He was saying things they didn’t like about overinflated budget expenditures and overreliance on high oil prices,” said Irina Yasina, a journalist and the daughter of economist Yevgeny Yasin, who served with Gaidar in President Boris Yeltsin’s government.
“He could have helped a lot more. He was thinking 24 hours a day,” Yasina told The St. Petersburg Times.
Yasina interviewed Gaidar just hours before his death, and her voice trembled as she talked.
“He looked the same as usual, and we even agreed to meet on Dec. 29,” she said.
One reason that politicians might have distanced themselves from Gaidar was public anger over his reforms that untied Soviet-era state controls from the economy.
On Jan. 1, 1992, the country woke up to find that the state had set free prices on all goods and services. Store shelves, which had been empty since the Soviet Union sank into the throes of economic collapse in the late 1980s, almost immediately filled with goods. But the prices for the goods, which were mostly imported, were beyond the reach of many Russians.
Inflation jumped to almost 2,000 percent that year, decimating the savings of ordinary Russians.
What was called “shock therapy” in former socialist countries as they started their transition to capitalism was also branded “Gaidar’s reforms” in Russia.
But Gaidar, who served as acting prime minister for just six months in 1992 before public anger forced Yeltsin to fire him, maintained that his bold policies saved Russia from civil war, and many liberal economists and politicians agree with him.
Medvedev described Gaidar as a “brave,” “honest” and “determined” economist in a letter of condolences to his family.
“He took responsibility for unpopular but essential measures during a period of radical changes,” Medvedev said. “He always firmly followed his convictions, which commanded respect from those who shared his views and his opponents as well.”
Putin called Gaidar’s death a “heavy loss for Russia.”
“He didn’t dodge responsibility and held onto his convictions with honor and courage in the most difficult situations,” Putin said in a statement.
Boris Nemtsov, a leader of the Solidarity opposition movement who co-founded the Union of Right Forces party with Gaidar in the early 2000s, told The St. Petersburg Times that Medvedev and Putin owed their jobs to Gaidar.
“I know that many people don’t like him, even hate him, but I hope his death will open their eyes,” said Nemtsov, who served as a deputy prime minister in Yeltsin’s government. “He is one of the founders of the new Russian state. Thanks to what he did, the current leaders can brag of their achievements because there is a private economy.”
Yasina and Boris Nadezhdin, head of the Moscow branch of the Union of Right Forces, said Gaidar managed to push the idea of the stabilization fund through the Kremlin in the early 2000s when oil prices started growing.
Ordinary Russians continue to disapprove of Gaidar’s reforms, a new survey shows. Fifty-seven percent of respondents disapproved of his work in the government in the 1990s, while 17 percent supported it, state-run VTsIOM found in a survey conducted Wednesday. The survey had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.
Gaidar’s fall from favor with the powers-that-be began shortly after he became acting prime minister on June 15, 1992. Anger over Gaidar’s reforms grew so strong that Yeltsin replaced him on Dec. 15 with Viktor Chernomyrdin, a Soviet-style bureaucrat rather than a liberal economist.
In 1993, Gaidar’s Democratic Choice of Russia party garnered 15 percent of the vote in State Duma elections. On that election day, the country also approved a referendum on a new constitution, and the date of the vote — Dec. 12 — has been observed as Constitution Day ever since.
But two years later, Gaidar’s party failed to clear the 5 percent threshold to win seats in the Duma after bitter public disappointment in the free market added to his growing unpopularity. In the meantime, Gaidar was sidelined from Yeltsin’s inner circle, and his influence on economic policymaking sharply declined.
Gaidar returned to politics in 1999 when the Union of Right Forces, built of several liberal parties, including his Democratic Choice, managed to make it into the Duma. As a lawmaker, Gaidar actively participated in drafting economic bills but avoided public politics. In 2003, the Union of Right Forces failed to get into the Duma, and Gaidar resigned from its governing bodies.
“Still he remained the supreme moral and intellectual authority for party members,” Nadezhdin said.
Gaidar shifted his focus to academia, writing several books on macroeconomics, history and political science. A university textbook on modern history that he wrote will be published in the spring, Yasina said.
Kremlin economic aide Arkady Dvorkovich praised Gaidar on Wednesday as Russia’s most prominent and world-renowned economist.
But Gaidar rarely received attention in the national media in recent years. The last time was in November 2006 when he fell ill during a visit to Ireland and claimed to have been poisoned by “open or covert enemies of the Kremlin.” The incident happened the same month that Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko died of radioactive poisoning in London. Gaidar’s friends later denied that he had been poisoned.
Several weeks before the incident, Gaidar had looked unwell during an interview with The Moscow Times. His face was haggard, and he spoke with a weak voice.
Gaidar used his last published interview, which appeared in Novaya Gazeta on Nov. 20, to present a new book warning about the risks faced by a state that chooses to strengthen its grip on society and the economy during an economic crisis.
“Russia has survived two such catastrophes, and there should not be a third one,” Gaidar said, referring to the 1917 Revolution and the Soviet collapse in 1991. “I want this to be understood by the country’s ruling elite and by those who disagree with the elite.”
Gaidar is the grandson of well-known Soviet writer Arkady Gaidar and Russian writer Pavel Bazhov. He is survived by his wife, Marianna, the daughter of prominent writer Arkady Strugatsky. The couple has three sons, including one who was adopted, and a daughter, Maria, a liberal politician and an aide to Kirov Governor Nikita Belykh.
A public memorial service is scheduled to be held at Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital at noon Saturday. No other information about funeral arrangements was immediately available.
Natalya Krainova contributed to this report.
TITLE: Tax on Tobacco May Be Quadrupled
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The State Duma may consider quadrupling tobacco excise instead of the 40 percent increase approved earlier, which could lead to the price of a packet of cigarettes doubling, Fontanka reported.
The Duma deputies hope the planned move will make more people quit smoking.
Tobacco producers say the excise increase will only have a negative effect on the transparency of the market, and will not influence the health of the population.
Deputies from the United Russia party, whose leader Boris Gryzlov is to head a commission on the issue, believes such actions could have a positive effect on people’s health.
The State Duma is currently discussing two options for a gradual increase in the excise. One option is to increase excise by 300 percent, the other by 400 percent. Under the latter option, the price of a packet of cigarettes would double in 2010. Deputies hope that the number of smokers in the country would significantly decrease as a result.
At the same time, deputies expect that a 400 percent increase in tobacco excise rates would provide the state budget with about 70 billion rubles ($2.28 billion.) The previously planned raise of 40 percent would bring in about another 10 billion rubles ($325 million,) Fontanka reported.
Tobacco producers said a significant increase in cigarette prices would cause a wave of indignation among customers and force some producers to start selling on the black market.
Nevo-Tabak tobacco producer said an excise increase in the current situation would not be constructive, Fontanka reported.
The company said that it would accept an increase in the VAT. Such a measure would be fair and would enable cheap cigarettes brands, which see a 20 to 25 percent loss in demand every year, to remain on the market, it said.
Anatoly Vereshchagin, communications director at JTI, said that JTI supports the well-balanced policy of the Russian government regarding gradual excise increases.
“Increasing excises by multiple times would increase the probability of illegal trade,” said Vereshchagin.
Smokers displayed mixed reactions to the news.
“I’ve been wanting to quit smoking for a long time, but my attempts to do so are not very successful,” said Artyom Zaitsev, 34, a manager. “So maybe an increase in cigarette prices would at least stop me from smoking as many cigarettes.”
Igor Zhmurin, 24, a student who said he smokes nearly two packets of cigarettes a day, said he would feel very negative about an increase in cigarette prices.
“I think higher prices would not stop me from smoking, but obviously someone would be getting more money from my pocket again,” Zhmurin said.
In November, the State Duma signed amendments to the Tax Code to increase the excise on beer and tobacco from 2010.
Tobacco production in Russia is concentrated mainly around Moscow and St. Petersburg. In St. Petersburg, two companies produce cigarettes — Philip Morris Izhora, a daughter company of Philip Morris International that produces 25 billion cigarettes a year; and Petro, the biggest factory of JT International that can produce up to 60 billion cigarettes a year.
TITLE: City’s Largest Private Festival Opens at Peterburgsky SKK
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A four-day tea-drinking fiesta kicked off Thursday with the opening of the St. Petersburg Samovar festival, which features a vast number of tastings and tea ceremonies from Japan, China, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Latin America.
The festival’s central character, Samovar-Batyushka or “Old Man Samovar” — an imposing-looking 45-liter giant — was delivered to St. Petersburg from Tula, an ancient Russian town equally renowned for its samovars, guns and gingerbreads.
One of the most popular events of the St. Petersburg Samovar festival, which is being hosted by the Peterburgsky Sport and Concert Complex (SKK), looks set to be a tea tasting titled “225 teacups of friendship” that aims to bring together people of various ethnic origins and different social and cultural backgrounds.
The event’s interactive element includes master-classes in lighting a samovar, baking, flower arranging, doll-making, painting, welding and other arts and crafts. Curators from the Russian Ethnography Museum will give talks on tea drinking traditions in Russia and Central Asia. Children will be able to share a cup of tea with magic fairies and elves or compete in throwing valenki — Russian felt boots.
The pies, candies, cakes and other sweet delicacies that are served with tea in various countries will also be presented in all their diversity at the festival, which was launched in 2006 and has evolved into the largest festival in St. Petersburg to be funded exclusively from private sources. Last year, over 20,000 guests attended.
Nuts feature prominently in the festival’s program alongside tea. Guests will compete in cracking nuts, making nut pendants and nut-inspired Christmas-tree decorations.
As part of the festival, Moscow collector Marjan Ivanov is exhibiting a wide-ranging display of nutcrackers of various colors, sizes and shapes.
A share of the profits from the event will be donated to St. Petersburg orphans, children suffering from cancer and child amputees.
For a more detailed program, visit www.usamovara.spb.ru
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: No Growth for Banking
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s banking sector faces “zero growth” in 2010, Alexander Turbanov, head of the Deposit Insurance Agency, said during a meeting of business leaders in Moscow on Thursday.
Nonperforming loans will remain a problem, albeit one banks can manage on their own using accumulated reserves, Turbanov said.
“This will take up nearly all their reserves, however, and won’t leave any reserves of capital to expand lending,” he said.
VTB Declines on Loss
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — VTB Group, Russia’s second-largest bank, fell the most in three weeks after reporting a net loss that was almost double the year-earlier figure.
VTB declined 2.3 percent to 6.79 kopeks at 1.30 p.m. in Moscow on Thursday, heading for its biggest decline since Nov. 26. The stock has still more than doubled this year.
State-run VTB earlier Thursday said net loss in the third quarter widened to 15 billion rubles ($493 million) from 8.8 billion rubles in the same period last year as it set aside more cash to cover bad loans.
Carlsberg Hikes Forecast
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Carlsberg, the world’s fourth-largest brewer, raised its full-year earnings forecast after Russian distributors increased inventory ahead of a jump in beer excise duty at the beginning of next month.
Operating profit in 2009 will be at least 9.3 billion kroner ($1.8 billion), the Valby, Denmark-based company said in a statement Thursday, having previously predicted no less than 9 billion kroner. The Jan. 1 tax increase is causing Russian distributors to bring forward purchases, though it will have the opposite effect on sales in the first quarter of 2010, it said.
Carlsberg’s Baltika unit is the biggest brewer in Russia, where beer excise duty will triple next month to help curb what President Dmitry Medvedev has called the country’s “colossal” alcohol consumption. The Danish company cut its full-year sales forecast when the tax increase was announced in November, saying the measure will “clearly affect the beer market negatively.”
Local Bank Sees Decline
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Bank Saint Petersburg’s net income fell to 273.5 million rubles ($9 million) in the first nine months of the year, from 1.97 billion rubles in the same period last year, the bank said on its web site Thursday.
Severstal Considers IPO
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Severstal, Russia’s largest steelmaker, is considering whether to sell shares of its gold-mining unit after the price of the metal rose to a record high, said two people familiar with the situation.
Severstal may hold an initial public offering late next year or in early 2011, said the people, who declined to be identified because the deliberations are private. The location for a potential IPO hasn’t been chosen, the people said.
Severstal’s billionaire owner Alexei Mordashov, 44, vowed in 2007 to turn the company into Russia’s third-biggest gold miner. While Severstal’s U.S. steel acquisitions have lost money, gold accounted for most of its earnings in the first nine months of the year. The gold unit is worth about $1.5 billion, said Barry Ehrlich, an analyst at Alfa Bank in Moscow.
TITLE: Big in Japan
AUTHOR: By Matthew Brown
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An eye-catching feature of post-Soviet Russia was a proliferation of casinos and gaming palaces. But a new law aimed at moving gambling establishments away from cities into yet-to-be-built Las Vegas-style zones has meant the closure of these symbols of 1990s excess. As the world financial crisis bites, the premises of many former casinos have yet to find new tenants.
Such is the forlorn fate of Captain Morgan, a casino on Bolshoi Prospekt on the Petrograd Side that was once a landmark thanks to an enormous neon awning above its smoked glass doors. Now those doors have a “For Rent” sign pasted on them and the gamblers have moved on.
A happier fate has befallen the restaurant that was once part of the casino. Opening last year under the name Sochi, the restaurant was last month taken over by the Tokyo City chain of sushi restaurants that has other branches on Prospekt Stachek and Bogatyrsky Prospekt. To promote the new venture, the owners have installed an electronic display board that flashes messages about meal deals to passersby on Bolshoi.
From the street, guests are directed to an impressive marble lobby with gilt-edged mirrors, from where an elevator takes them directly to the third floor on which Tokyo City is located. The restaurant seats 130 and occupies a large hall with a small bar at the far end. Its interior design is underwhelming. With oppressively dark walls and low ceilings, the room feels claustrophobic. The minimalist effect created by black tables and bamboo screens is shattered by a series of seriously tacky chandeliers and a home-cinema screen covering one wall.
The waiters and waitress are dressed in unforgiving brown satin kimonos, but acquit themselves with efficient and friendly service. A full range of sushi and related Japanese cuisine is on offer, with rolls from 70 rubles ($2.30) and sets from 720 rubles to 1,500 rubles ($24 to $50). As an introductory offer, the restaurant is offering a two-for-the-price-of-one deal, making Tokyo City an excellent choice for large groups and celebratory dinners. There’s also a decent wine card with an excellent Santa Regina Chilean Merlot for 800 rubles a bottle ($27).
Set No. 1 comprises salmon, tuna, squid, mackerel, eel and seaweed rolls for 720 rubles ($24). It is immediately apparent that despite the shortcomings of its somewhat tasteless interior design, the food at Tokyo City is a cut above its cheaper rivals such as Yevrasia or Dve Palochki. A dish consisting of six mussels baked with cheese (320 rubles, $11) is a real standout, with each mollusk sitting snugly in its shell under a blanket of bubbling cheese mousse infused with crab caviar.
Unlike many of St. Petersburg’s Japanese restaurants, Tokyo City seems to understand that the key to good sushi is fresh ingredients and careful presentation.