Russia's Ruble continues to appreciate against the Dollar and Euro. Russiaâs Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs is elaborating an action plan to create an international financial center in the country. Its management board will focus on the draft documents at the nearest sitting. Although the Economic Development Ministry that is to submit its own concept by August finds some proposals vital, it says they donât directly relate to the subject-matter, i.e. the centerâs establishment. The list of the Union integrates ideas ranging from establishing a gas OPEC to lowering the profit tax. The Banking Commission of Russiaâs Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs approved yesterday two documents aimed at setting up an international financial center in Russia. Vladimir Putin and then Dmitry Medvedev have been advocating its creation since the second half of 2007. Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina will submit to the government by August 1, 2008 the concept for setting up this center by 2020. The concept of Russiaâs Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs spells out a number of mid-term and immediate actions. In interpretation of the Union, the center could be created provided the ruble turns into a global reserve currency. One of its aims will be investing the money of sovereign funds into the instruments circulating in Russia and it will deal with the international transactions related to the electric power and food (mostly grain) industries. In essence, the concept of the Union promotes ideas popular in the Economic Development Ministry in time of German Gref and currently discussed by top bureaucrats of the country, including Vice Premier Igor Sechin. The matters at stake are transferring to ruble-settlement the export deals of Russiaâs extraction companies and developing international commodity exchanges in Russia with the buyout of key trading floors in the EU (Germany, Sweden), Central Asia (Kazakhstan), South-East Asia (Vietnam) but without competing with the New York and London exchanges. People in the Economic Development Ministry find the proposals of Russiaâs entrepreneurs vital but specify that quite a few of them âhave nothing to do with establishing the center in Russiaâ and the implementation potential of some of them is very low, and therefore, the ministry will hardly add those proposals to the concept.
I think Dubai has a better prospect than Moscow. Most people outside of Russia equate anything Russian with endemic corruption. Which is true.
What a joke. Russia has a few tasks before becoming a global financial centre: 1. Have genuine rule of law; non-corrupt legal system. 2. Develop true middle class 3. Reform corrupt military 4. Diversify economy away from from natural resources
I worked with 200 russians launching rockets carrying commercial satellites from a platform in the central pacific ocean. These highly educated "rocket scientists" were massively alcoholic. I encountered them drunk during critical launch operations several times. The bar on the command ship would be closed for a week before launch but these guys must have brought their own. I guess its their home climate or just the culture but I have never before met folks who would get hammered before doing dangerous tasks. My policy was to get hammered *after* dangerous tasks. Anyway, my point is that the anecdotes about drunk Russians proved to be true in my experience.
What concerns me about this kind of speculation is that everybody is looking for 'the next big thing', jumping from one bubble to another. Has anybody considered that there may be no true winners in the end...?
Most current Wall Street firms would fit right in over there though not sure they could handle the level of competition from the natives.