Putin’s Words
That, my friends, is power.
Speaking at an industry conference this week, Putin, Russia’s former president and now prime minister, spoke five sentences critical of one of his country’s big steel companies, Mechel, and its billionaire chief executive, Igor Zyuzin.
In a sign of Putin’s enduring power in Russia and around the world, that criticism came with a price: about $1.2 billion per sentence in lost shareholder value.
Such is the power of Putin’s words - even after “stepping down” to prime minister in May - that shares in Mechel, a coal mining and steel company, plunged almost 38 percent on the New York Stock Exchange after Putin complained that the company was charging more to its domestic customers than to its foreign ones. The comments wiped out, at least for a day, about $6 billion in stockholder value.
But consider that such power is the result of tyranny and the threat of more tyranny.
Fortunately, the President looked into his soul and found him a good partner for us.
Back in the real world, you’ve hit the key point: the KGB took over from the Czar and, simply, hasn’t let go. There’s no reason to expect they will.
Posted by Mpeterson on July 27, 2008 at 2138 hrsI suppose the investors get a little shaky when they realize that Putin can simply round up the Mechel execs and imprison them, or have them killed.
Posted by on July 28, 2008 at 1005 hrs
Ol' Army
