By John Helmer, Moscow South African James Nieuwenhuys has taken over as chief operating officer of Moscow-based Polyus Gold, Russia’s largest goldminer. The mining company, owned in roughly equal parts by Mikhail Prokhorov and Suleiman Kerimov, has been unsuccessful in months of effort to find a major international mining company to partner, or to take […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, May 26th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow The three greatest Canadians of all time are Glenn Gould, Pierre Trudeau, and Dudley Do-Right. A poll of Canadian businessmen in Moscow recently recommended Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Orr to displace the first two. The Canadian Broadcasting Commission nationwide poll of 2004 put Tommy Douglas and Terry Fox at the top. […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow When we last put down the telephone to Maxim Finsky’s office at Intergeo in Moscow, he wasn’t saying much of anything about his attempt to persuade Canadian shareholders to accept his proposed merger of two junior goldminers he controls, White Tiger Gold and Century Mining.

by John Helmer - Tuesday, April 5th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Are they real teeth in the tiger’s mouth, or are they falsies? This is the question which shareholders of two Canadian-listed junior goldmining companies have been asking since the two companies, both apparently controlled by Russian mining entrepreneur Maxim Finsky (image), proposed an all-share merger on the basis of valuation of […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, March 31st, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow As names go, Berezovsky is commonplace in Russia, though not as common in Russia as Brown is in the US or UK.

by John Helmer - Monday, February 21st, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow How real is the downturn in Russian company valuations and the sell-off in Russian stocks ? Here’s what the Financial Times reports today, following the cancellation in London of the three Russian IPO’s – Koks, Chelyabinsk Pipe, and now Nord Gold:

by John Helmer - Friday, February 11th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Not even Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at a smelter inauguration, Bloomberg promotion, lashings of gold paint on the factory walls, and fourteen hundred spotless white worker uniforms have given Chelyabinsk Pipe (Chelpipe, ChTPZ), Russia’s third largest producer of steel pipes and tubes, the dressing-up required to attract international buyers for its […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, February 10th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow In December, when we last visited with Mikhail Prokhorov, the only Russian to own an American basketball team, he appeared to be announcing that he prefers his ball to his shovel, and is getting ready to sell Polyus Gold, Russia’s leading goldminer, to “one of the leading gold companies in the […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow According to what Morgan Stanley has written on page 7 of the Nord Gold prospectus just released , the goldminer owned by Alexei Mordashov – this week trying to sell its shares on the London Stock Exchange — “has entered into a relationship agreement with OAO Severstal and the Selling Shareholder […]

by John Helmer - Monday, January 31st, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Tod Browning was an American filmmaker of the early 20th century who suffered from circus obsessions, alcohol, wife and career troubles, which distracted him from showing an interest in the Russian revolution. While the Bolsheviks were planning their takeover of the Kerensky government, Browning made his first feature film. Called Jim […]

by John Helmer - Friday, December 24th, 2010
No Comments »