Russia

The federal bankruptcy court filing earlier this week by Sea Launch Co., the last remaining U.S.-based commercial satellite launch provider, could hand its European and Russian rivals new opportunities to gain control over the industry, The Wall Street Journal reported. The filing underscores the financial weakness of the commercial satellite launch business in the U.S. The partnership's woes are in stark contrast to the expanding, government-supported launch operations aggressively marketed by Russia and the European launch consortium Arianespace.

Beijing is diversifying its overseas investments and pressing U.S. officials for an "exit strategy" from the ultra-loose fiscal and monetary policies that China fears will eventually inflate away the value of its U.S. bond holdings and fell the dollar. But China's pragmatic policymakers also know there is no practical alternative to the dollar as the world's main reserve currency.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, opening the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, said on Friday the global economy had avoided the worst but warned participants it was too early to celebrate recovery, Reuters reported. The global financial crisis has hit Russia harder than any other big emerging market but Medvedev said in generally sober remarks that the country had stabilized its financial system and followed appropriate policies.

Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev said his Blue Wings AG airline in Germany is planning to file for bankruptcy after the discount carrier’s flight license was revoked, Bloomberg reported. “I will probably file for bankruptcy and will try to make a point that it is the German government’s fault,” Lebedev said today in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Russian banks’ bad loans will quadruple to $70 billion this year, deepening the country’s worst financial crisis since the government’s 1998 debt default, a Bloomberg survey shows. Non-performing loans will increase to 12.8 percent of the 18.4 trillion rubles ($549 billion) owed by Russian companies and individuals by the end of this year, from 3.2 percent in March, according to the mean estimate of 17 banking analysts polled by Bloomberg in the past week. HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe’s biggest bank, expects delinquencies to reach 23 percent, Europe’s highest rate after Hungary at 25 percent.

China called for the creation of a new currency to eventually replace the dollar as the world's standard, proposing a sweeping overhaul of global finance that reflects developing nations' growing unhappiness with the U.S. role in the world economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. The unusual proposal, made by central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan in an essay released Monday in Beijing, is part of China's increasingly assertive approach to shaping the global response to the financial crisis. Mr.

A tiny default by a Russian aircraft-leasing company is sending ripples through the much larger market for the country's debt, The Wall Street Journal reported. The default by Finance Leasing Co. on $250 million of bonds is the first by a Russian state-owned company on foreign debt since the country's 1998 financial meltdown. That is rattling foreign investors, who worry that Russia could allow many more companies to renege on billions of dollars of debt while it grapples with an economic and financial crisis.

Russia’s government may buy a stake in billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s Indian mobile-phone unit to help his holding company AFK Sistema pay off debt. “It’s only at the discussion stage and a lot will depend on the Indian side, which is also a shareholder in this company,” First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said in an interview in his office in Moscow yesterday. Sistema Shyam TeleServices Ltd. has licenses to operate in all of India’s 22 regulatory regions, which have a combined population of more than 1 billion.

At least 17 of the 20 major nations that vowed at a November summit to avoid protectionist steps that could spark a global trade war have violated that promise, with countries from Russia to the United States to China enacting measures aimed at limiting the flow of imported goods, according to a World Bank report unveiled yesterday. The report underscores a "worrying" trend toward protectionism as countries rush to shield their ailing domestic industries during the global economic crisis, The Washington Post reported.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday said Ukraine was on the verge of bankruptcy but promised Moscow would not push its ex-Soviet neighbour over the edge with high gas bills, local news agencies reported. The global crisis has battered Ukraine's economy, with industrial output down more than 30 percent year-on-year, GDP seen shrinking six percent in 2009 and its currency losing 50 percent of its value against the dollar at one point last year.