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Eastern Europe
June 21, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 15
Putin promises to take out the garbage in his annual phone-in
Ben Aris in Berlin
Russia faces protests and widespread social unrest if the government fails to pull off its economic transformation that is the goal of the RUB25.7 trillion ($390bn) investments planned for the 12 national projects, former finance minister and Audit Chamber head Alexei Kudrin warned on June 19.
Kudrin reiterated that the Russian economy is stagnating after growth in the first quarter came in well below expectations and expanded by only 0.5% year-on-year in the first three months of the year and real incomes have been flat or falling for six years in a row. And it could get worse: Fitch Ratings just downgraded the GDP growth outlook
for 2019 to 1.2%, whereas the government started the year predicting growth of close to 2%.
These were the issues that Russian President Vladimir Putin faced during his annual phone-in where he attempts to address the questions and concerns of the population. His answer was to promise to take the rubbish out.
"Rubbish dumps have kept growing ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union,” Putin said during the phone-in that was reportedly watched by three quarters of the population.
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RenCap shutters Dubai hub again as losses spread outside Russia Jason Corcoran in London
Renaissance Capital, the Russian investment bank owned by billionaire oligarch Mikhail Prok- horov, has retreated from Dubai for a second time as its international operations based out of Lon- don swung to a loss, bne IntelliNews can reveal.
The bank said it has ceased trading and filed a notification to withdraw its regulatory license from the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), ac- cording to a 50-page filing made this month with UK Companies House. The liquidation of the com- pany was completed on March 18 this year after the carrying value was written down to $380,000, which reflected the directors’ expectation of the
net realisable value and resulted in an impair- ment loss of $1.2mn.
Ahmed Badr, the chief executive of RenCap Mid- dle East of North Africa (MENA), knew the writing was on the wall and jumped ship late last year to rejoin Credit Suisse after four years in charge at the Dubai hub.
Former RenCap boss Igor Vayn was so bullish on Dubai that he made the case to the Financial Times in 2015 about moving the group’s HQ to the UAE.
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