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MOSCOW — The country’s stock markets were mauled on Friday, erasing modest gains earlier in the week, after Standard & Poor’s cut Russia’s outlook and the price of Urals crude slid below $60 per barrel. Trading on both the MICEX and RTS was halted for an hour in the early afternoon, only to reopen with sharp declines that saw both exchanges ordered closed until Tuesday. London-traded companies continued plummeting, with the FTSE Russia IOB Index falling more than 18 percent. OPEC said Friday that it would cut production by 1.5 million barrels per day, but the decision did nothing to halt the decline of crude or the energy-heavy Russian stock market. The benchmark RTS Index fell 13. |
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LET’S DANCE!
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A dance troupe looks on as another ensemble performs at the opening of the Fifth International Angel of Hope Folk Song and Dance Competition at the Estrada Theater on Bolshaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa. The event will end with a gala ceremony on Sunday. |
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MOSCOW — Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the United States on Friday that a decision to extend a trade ban on state arms trader Rosoboronexport threatened to undermine fraught ties between Moscow and Washington. A senior U.S. official, however, said the sanctions merely reflected Washington’s concerns about arming Iran. The sanctions issued by the U.
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Contemporary classical music spanning the 20th century from Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg to Henri Dutilleux and Rodion Shchedrin takes center stage at the Second New Horizons festival that kicks off at the Mariinsky Concert Hall on Thursday. The brains behind the event is the Mariinsky’s indefatiguable artistic director, Valery Gergiev, whose ambition is to turn arguably Russia’s most successful opera and ballet company into a versatile troupe that performs contemporary classics with as much quality as its trademark productions that date from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. |
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MOSCOW — The ruble weakened to an 18-month low against the dollar and strengthened for a second straight day versus the euro as the prospect of a global slowdown lures investors to the relative safety of the U. |
All photos from issue.
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 LONDON — Business minister Peter Mandelson said on Monday he had no plans to resign over his meetings with Russia’s wealthiest man, a relationship opposition parties say the minister needs to clarify. Asked if he would resign over meetings with Russian metals magnate Oleg Deripaska, Mandelson said: “No, that is a fantasy.” Mandelson, who this month left his post as EU trade commissioner to rejoin the government, has been criticised in the media for his meetings with Deripaska, whose businesses can be affected by EU trade rules. Mandelson has twice been forced to quit the government in the past over scandals, one involving a property deal and the other the issuance of passports. |
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WET, WET, WET
Alexander Èelenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Pedestrians on St. Petersburg's central thoroughfare, Nevsky Prospekt, relish the seasonal weather from beneath their umbrellas. Rain is predicted for much of the week. |
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MOSCOW — A police officer has been charged with accidentally shooting Magomed Yevloyev, owner of the embattled opposition web site Ingushetiya.ru, the Investigative Committee said Friday. Ibragim Yevloyev, a criminal police officer with Ingushetia’s Interior Ministry who is not related to the slain journalist, faces charges of manslaughter when the case goes to court, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
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MOSCOW — A passenger on a Sky Express flight from Sochi to Moscow threatened to blow up the plane if it didn’t reroute to Austria on Friday, but he was overpowered and the plane landed safely. The passenger, identified as Oleg Vasyanovich, 33, had been released earlier in the day from psychiatric treatment that was ordered after he killed his mother, the Federal Security Service said. The Boeing 737 belonging to budget airline Sky Express was about 17 minutes into a flight from the Black Sea resort city of Sochi with about 130 people on board when Vasyanovich gave a note to a flight attendant saying he would blow up the plane unless it rerouted to Vienna, the FSB said, Interfax reported. |
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 Most Russian claims that Georgia is violating a cease-fire agreement in the breakaway region of South Ossetia appear to be inflated, the head of the EU monitoring mission there said Friday. |
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The All-Russian Logistics Forum that opened Thursday at the city’s Radisson SAS Royal Hotel and ran through Friday attracted representatives of the logistics industry from around Russia, who gathered to discuss contemporary developments in the industry and exchange ideas and opinions. The themes discussed at the forum’s opening session included presentations on low-cost logistics as a method of improving efficiency by Alexander Yakovlev, logistics director at Nutritsiya; implementing a project to organize regional centers for a chain of shops by Vera Gorbachyova, sales and marketing director at Relogix; and innovations in logistics as an essential part of the business process, by Yury Legkov, deputy head of the order management department at Khlebny Dom. |
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 MOSCOW — The country’s car market, which was fast becoming the largest in Europe, has not stagnated yet, but the main drivers of its success have been buried under the weight of the global financial crisis. |
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MOSCOW — The Central Bank has the means to control sharp fluctuations in its currency but does not yet see the need to limit capital movements or change the ruble’s trading corridor, two top officials said Saturday. Alexei Ulyukayev, the Central Bank’s first deputy chairman, said such measures would not be necessary because the country’s macroeconomic condition remains strong. |
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Lukoil Interested MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Lukoil, Russia’s largest independent oil producer, would be interested in developing the Russian offshore shelf as part of a group led by a state-owned company, Interfax reported. |
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MOSCOW — The Natural Resources and Environment Ministry said Friday that Imperial Energy would be deemed nonstrategic, removing the first of two hurdles for Indian state-run energy major ONGC to buy the company. In late August, ONGC agreed on a takeover of the midsized, London-listed oil producer for $2. |
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MOSCOW — As distrust among banks spreads to retailers and consumers, signs are mounting that a worsening of the financial crisis could dampen businesses’ willingness to accept credit and debit cards. |
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MOSCOW — The global financial crisis dealt Oleg Deripaska another blow Friday, when his mining company, Strikeforce Mining and Resources, postponed a Hong Kong share float because of the market downturn. SMR, which accounts for 4 percent of the world supply of steel-hardening alloy ferro-molybdenum, will delay the proposed IPO until markets recover or stabilize, the company’s chief executive, Geoffrey Cowley, said Friday. |
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MOSCOW — The government is drafting a program for sustaining the economy amid the global financial crisis, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said Sunday. |
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 As the ruble fluctuates, stock markets slump and investment banks are sold off for a song, assessments of and forecasts for the financial situation vary. Sales of jewelry soared in October as Russians hurried to invest their money rather than leave it in banks, while television beamed politicians urging people to stay calm and offering reassurances that Russia’s economy is perfectly well equipped to weather the financial storm. |
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Changing jobs is a natural part of almost any career. An employee finds a new post with a higher salary, considers all the pros and cons, and makes a final decision. |
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In an atmosphere of global financial crisis, the Russian recruitment market is undergoing major changes, including dramatically increasing demand for technical staff and qualified specialists. The main problem currently facing the St. Petersburg recruitment market is not unemployment, but a shortage of skilled personnel. Statistics published by City Hall have shown that 70 percent of job seekers using the city’s employment service are women. According to central government official records, at the beginning of the summer the unemployment rate in St. Petersburg was 2.2 percent — less than half the country’s average unemployment rate, which was 5. |
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 Eighty percent of all job advertisements specify an age range among the requirements. In the U.S., a special law — the Age Discrimination in Employment Act — protects people from employment discrimination based on age. |
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The fortunes of executive search companies — once known as headhunters — can offer a glimpse into the true state of the economy. Who’s hiring who to run corporations, and where they come from, are important indicators of growth and movement of capital — particularly in an emerging but booming economy such as Russia’s. Despite the recent credit crunch in the U.S. and the knock on effect on European financial markets, the latest State of the Executive Search Industry Report by the Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC) revealed that executive search industry revenues continue to grow. Global net revenues experienced a rise of 9 percent in the first quarter of 2008. |
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 General research into salaries in Russia reveals specific features and trends — notably that salaries in general are increasing. In a new book, “Salaries in Russia. |
 Swedish recruitment agency Human Search opened an office in St. Petersburg 18 months ago. The company’s CEO and founder, Eva Jacobson Weinefalk, and Henric Nilsson, country manager for Russia, talked to The St. Petersburg Times about the process of transferring their headhunting techniques and experience of working in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe to the local recruitment market. |
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Our businesses are very dependent on people’s skills and loyalty — that was an issue I discussed with an old friend and colleague during lunch on a warm sunny day. |
 Customers seek to purchase goods that correspond fully to their individual demands, and companies that are capable of offering such goods attract and retain customers. A similar scheme is used by companies to win over their staff. They develop new and original methods of retaining and motivating employees. |
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At present, competition on the job market is such that even well known employers with established brands have difficulty providing their personnel needs. |
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The salary expectations of St. Petersburg’s business school graduates are growing, but the financial crisis could curb them, experts believe. A year ago, about half of all MBA holders counted on earning a salary of 50,000 to 100,000 rubles ($2,000-$4,000) per month, but by September this year, only a third of MBA graduates had such expectations, according to the recruitment research agency HeadHunter: St. |
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With the growing lack of qualified personnel in Russia, more and more companies are inventing new tactics to lure new personnel to them. Although the global financial crisis has not bypassed Russia’s labor market entirely, there are still some “white collars” that are always in demand — namely IT specialists. |
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 Most Russia observers will be quick to point out that trying to transform the Russian business culture is a nonstarter. There are many rookie expat managers who have been tripped up by doing things in Russia the same way they do back back home. Russia has its own unique culture. |
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It is now in Russia’s interest to release former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky from prison. That wasn’t always the case. Early on, the benefits of keeping him in prison outweighed the costs. |
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 JERUSALEM — Tzipi Livni has seen a sharp turnaround in fortunes for Israel’s ruling Kadima party since she became leader last month and it could beat the right-wing opposition in a coming election, polls on Monday indicated. President Shimon Peres, formally setting into motion procedures for a national ballot, told the Knesset after consultations with political parties that there is now no chance of reaching a deal now to form a new coalition government. Following Peres’ announcement, parliament has up to three weeks to dissolve itself and set an election date, widely expected to be sometime in January or February. Two newspaper surveys, published after Livni abandoned on Sunday her efforts to forge a coalition government and recommended to Peres a parliamentary election be held, showed Kadima just beating Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud — a reversal of the results forecast in previous polls published in August. |
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Light Show / Reuters
Devotees pay obeisance near the holy Sikh shrine of Golden Temple on the eve of Diwali festival in the northern Indian city of Amritsar on Monday. |
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SEOUL — North Korea complained during rare military talks with the South on Monday about anti-Pyongyang leaflets being sent into its territory by balloons, with a South Korean civic group sending a new batch over the communist state. The talks were held despite a threat about 10 days ago from impoverished North Korea to cut off all ties with the South — a major supplier of aid and cash — in anger at the hardline policies of its president, whom it brands a U.
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Issues Archive