Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
"... But my sources are clear that support for Putin is collapsing internally and his end game is about to kick off."
What sort of timescale ranges are they envisioning?
Yes, I believe RA owned all the shares of the private UK company Fordstam Ltd, which in turn owned 100% of Chelsea FC.
Incidentally, it's recently been reported that a British MP has said the majority of the money from the sale of Chelsea FC on 30 May, around £2.5bn, is still in a frozen Barclays current account waiting to be paid out to a fund to help support the people of Ukraine, but that the fund has not yet been setup by the UK Government.
Putin may be getting the message that attempting to freeze Europe may not work as expected, and has already been subtly (not) mentioning about grain exports again. That's a trickier one for him, as then he'll be trying to starve others, not just Europeans.
And despite the Queen's contempt for Putin, it's still nice of him to send his heartfelt condolences to the similarly contemptuous Royal family, though not that long ago I do seem to recall he was threatening to vaporise the UK if they said more nasty things about him - some people, eh!
Anyway, the Queens place is history is assured - and so, unfortunately for him, is Putin's.
Big 4 firms: Gazprom, Surgutneftegas, Rosneft, or Lukoil
"Oil price.com “Europe is Buying All the Russian Oil It can Before Banning It” Sep07 2022 6.00pm"
Sounds not unreasonable to me.
European purchases from Russia then go to (or near to) zero when it's banned, and thus ZERO income from Europe for Russia thereafter.
MOEX surely isn't working as market should when in aggregate, based on MOEX figures from 1st July last year, 80.7% of the free-float shares are owned by foreigners - foreigners who are currently not permitted to sell - and then combine that with a RUB to GBP / USD exchange rate that is significantly stronger than when the war commenced. Based on the above, directly comparing LSE and MOEX prices (via current exchange rates) seems a little pointless to me at the moment.
"And the UK has reached banana republic status when assets are illegally confiscated from people with Russian names because they know Putin!"
You don't give up with your nonsense, do you - assets in Evraz are frozen, not confiscated.
"Russian banks lost a combined 1.5 trillion roubles in the first half of the year as western sanctions shut them out of crucial parts of the global financial system. Dmitry Tulin, first deputy chairman of Russia’s central bank, said around two-thirds of the losses came from foreign currency operations as lenders were blocked from trading in dollars, euros and other currencies. Unprofitable banks racked up a combined 1.9 trillion rouble loss, while profitable lenders earned a combined 400bn roubles. Mr Tulin said it had become “more and more problematic” for Russian lenders to make payments in “toxic” currencies even when they were not directly targeted by sanctions." (Telegraph)
Europe has stated that it wants to end it's dependency on Russian gas - so Russia is "helping" Europe to meet it targets earlier than expected, one could argue.
And I wonder how China and India, looking on from afar, interpret Russia's actions against its former best customers - perhaps there's an important lesson for them here about Russia.
My suspicion is that you'll find that they're wholly incapable of elaborating.
Looking forward to Monday morning when DannyDavis1981's toxic effluent will be consigned to the appropriate receptacle.
"... If Evraz do announce a dividend, our Dividends team will investigate if and how we would be expected to receive the payment."
Don't understand the 'if' bit, as HL must receive the dividend as they are the ones on the share register.
They don't, though, dictate market prices, and if they tried to directly influence them they'd be in big trouble.
Some here are long term investors (I think), some short term, and the level of prices has different connotations for each.
Long term investors who want to reinvest their dividends (when they come back!) will benefit from reinvesting at lower prices (even though higher prices might make them feel better), and those with a shorter term perspective want increasing prices for capital gains.
Whichever one is relevant, long term survival is always the name of the game!
"But this current price is not alarming the board at all .."
Why would the board care about the share price, unless they had performance pay related to it?
Low prices mean they could buy more shares for a given amount of money, if they wanted to, and very long term investors will greatly benefit if they are able to reinvesting what might be very substantial dividends in the future at lower share prices (as Warren Buffett keeps reminding us all).
"... And I wouldn't give the board such a glowing reference ..."
Also wonder how scared some of them might be of committing an unpatriotic act, especially those that are resident in Russia and have been imprudent enough to only have Russian citizenship, and so can't easily escape elsewhere at a moments notice.
Unlike the biggest shareholder, Alexander Nesis, who is a Swiss resident with citizenship of Israel and Malta (plus Russia), and holds their interests via a Cypriot company (all according to Polymetal's website).
"He's fighting for his own team against those trying to crush his."
So it's an enormous shame for all Russians that the team only includes one member.
Steven Dashevsky - "Ukraine-born US citizen living for 15 years in Moscow" [FT reported in 2014].
“Call me a Slavic chauvinist but I believe the most important strategic advantages for Russia in this world are not oil, nor gas, nor nuclear weapons, but friendly (even fraternal, which already exist) relations with Ukrainians and Belarusians,” he said, appealing to the view that Ukraine is not like a foreign country, given that the first Slavic state had its capital in Kiev."
Now also seemingly British as well, having filed with Companies House his "New Nationality" as "British" in Sep. 2021.
It might be due to probate, where the estate of the deceased needs to be valued for inheritance tax purposes.
Interesting though that HL would describe it 'undervalued', even though it may well be. But not sure why HL would be getting involved in trying to more accurately determine its "value". Perhaps someone is trying to claim its value is zero, and write it off, but again not sure why HL would be involved.
Can anyone ask them why they are involved in doing this?
Germany is searching far and wide for gas supplies to use this winter, but also looking more strategically into the future to ensure it minimises its reliance on Russia, and it sees Canada as an important partner.
'"As Germany is moving away from Russian energy at warp speed, Canada is our partner of choice," said Scholz at a German-Canadian economic conference in Toronto. "For now, this means increasing our LNG imports. We hope that Canadian LNG will play a major role in this."'
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/canadian-lng-could-play-major-role-germanys-shift-russian-gas-scholz-2022-08-23/
While there are no LNG terminals in Canada at the moment, and those planned are only on the west coast, it would seem safe to assume that potentially high demand from Europe would make building them both economic and highly desirable.
It's also looking to take green hydrogen (in the form of ammonia) from Canada from 2025 or so, and use this as an energy source, something both countries see has huge potential as a clean fuel.
Once the war is over it seems unlikely that Russia will find the reception for it gas and oil as welcoming as before the war from Europe (except perhaps Hungary!), and it will be more at the mercy of some large, ultra-powerful, superficially (they probably despise you as an old colonial power) friendly customers, such as China.
And that's what happens when you systematically and repeatedly abuse your most important customers; there's rarely anyway back, and you've likely lost them forever. These customers may still need to buy from you in the short term out of necessity, but their commitment to find alternative suppliers in the medium/long term is immutable. A valuable lesson for Russia, perhaps.