MOSCOW (Reuters) – In the hands of powerful former deputy prime minister Igor Sechin, Russia’s state-controlled oil giant Rosneft (ROSN.MM: Quote, Profile, Research) is likely to make a grab for low-hanging fruit in Russia to feed its reserves and market value.

Sechin could eye targets such as Surgutneftegas (SNGS.MM: Quote, Profile, Research), Russia’s No.4 oil producer which is friendly with the Kremlin, or Zarubezhneft, which spearheads state energy investments in Vietnam and Cuba, sources and analysts said.

After his appointment as CEO this week, Sechin could also drive more international joint ventures after a dealmaking spree in which Rosneft partnered with the likes of ExxonMobil (XOM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) to explore the Russian Arctic.

Sechin had a behind-the-scenes role brokering landmark international deals when Vladimir Putin was serving as prime minister. Now the powerful confidant of the newly-inaugurated Russian president, is expected to lead from the front.

“He is a very influential guy,” Ivan Mazalov, fund manager of Russia-focused Prosperity Capital Management, said. “(Having him) as CEO is quite likely to be a positive experience for Rosneft shareholders … he will be able to be more focused on an active strategy, expansion, acquisitions.”

Following three major drilling deals with Exxon, Italy’s Eni (ENI.MI: Quote, Profile, Research) and Norway’s Statoil (STL.OL: Quote, Profile, Research), which gave Rosneft an entry ticket to projects around the world, Rosneft is eyeing its next act in a long-running effort to make it a leading player on world capital and energy markets.

“Rosneft has been fairly cautious in its forays internationally, but that isn’t to say it doesn’t look to start making a bigger impression, it could even be a foreign policy objective of this new administration,” said Mark Henderson, energy specialist at Credit Suisse in London.

MOSCOW, May 17 (Reuters) – Russia’s richest man recognized the value of Facebook Inc three years ago when he invested in the social networking company and now stands to enjoy a payday of around $1 billion, propelling him further ahead of Russia’s oligarchs, who have largely stuck with oil and steel.

Alisher Usmanov, who topped Forbes magazine’s annual list of Russia’s richest investors in April, began his career making plastic bags and built his fortune in metals and mining. He is now worth $18.1 billion, up from $2.6 billion six years ago, according to Forbes.

It is Usmanov’s technology-related bets that have set him apart from his country’s rivals, and 2012 looks set to be a particularly lucrative year. Along with the Facebook stake that values the firm at 10 times what it was worth when he invested three years ago, Usmanov plans to float MegaFon, the $20 billion Russian telecoms firm he took control of last month.

“He has his fingers everywhere,” said one Moscow-based financial source who said he knows Usmanov.

“With MegaFon and Facebook, it looks as though he’ll be having a massive liquidity event. It’s quite incredible. It could be that he creates a huge holding company … or he could make a run at a big international company,” the source said.

Usmanov, 58, born in the Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, also controls iron ore miner Metalloinvest, Russian daily Kommersant, television assets and has a stake in London soccer club Arsenal.

AGGRESSIVE

MOSCOW, May 15 (Reuters) – Telecoms operator Vimpelcom said it was seeing signs of a turnaround in its core Russian business, and it had a good chance of winning one of the next-generation 4G licences to be awarded by the government.

Though overall first quarter net profit fell by nearly a third, hit by higher taxes and rising finance costs, New York-listed Vimpelcom said core profit in Russia had reversed a decline seen last year and revenues were growing.

“We hope and believe this is the sign of a first turnaround in Russia in respect to performance,” CEO Jo Lunder said in a telephone interview. “We are not so focused on subscriber market share and more focused on EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation).”

The Russian market is maturing after many years of growth, with operators now more focused on cost control and cashflows rather than competing on price, Lunder said.

EBITDA in Russia rose 9 percent year-on-year to 27.7 billion roubles ($913 million), while revenues grew 11 percent to 67 billion roubles. The company said Russian results were boosted by higher internet usage and better control of costs.

Subscriber numbers grew 5 percent year on year to 55.6 million, though they fell 3 percent on the previous quarter.

“The company has finally started to show good results in Russia, evidence of improvement in the mobile market as a whole,” said Victor Klimovich, telecoms analyst at VTB Capital.

MOSCOW, May 14 (Reuters) – Russian miner Polymetal is selling its S iberian g old deposit to a company founded by the former chief executive of Ca nadian miner Centerra Gold, who is on the hunt for other deals in the region, the companies said on Monday.

Polymetal said on Monday it has sold the Veduga deposit to Polygon Gold, founded by Leonard Homeniuk, a n on-executive director of Polymetal who was ch ief executive at Ce nterra from 2004 to 2008.

Polymetal said it sold 100 percent of the Amikan holding company which owns the gold deposit, in exchange for $20 million cash and an 81.8 percent stake in Polygon.

Homeniuk said that Polygon would take a simpler approach to mining the deposit, once part of AngloGold Ashanti’s grouping of Russian assets. AngloGold Ashanti sold a package of Russian interests to Polymetal in February.

Instead of using pressure oxidation, “a very capital expensive operation”, he said Polygon would produce a gold concentrate and ship that concentrate to a third party processor.

Polygon was formed specifically to buy this asset, Homeniuk said, and will focus on bringing it into production. At the same time, Polygon will be on the hunt for other complementary assets in the region.

Homeniuk, who has also held an executive position at uranium miner Cameco Corp, said while some investors are reluctant to buy assets in Russia, he didn’t view the risk “as particularly onerous compared with other regions”.

PARIS/MOSCOW (Reuters) – Renault and Japanese partner Nissan moved to expand in the growing Russian car market on Thursday with a $750-million deal that would give the French manufacturer effective control of Lada maker OAO AvtoVAZ.

The tentative agreement to double the alliance’s 25-percent stake via a joint venture with a Moscow state entity ups the ante for Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn’s four-year-old bet on the Russian market, though some analysts said the deal looked dear – valuing AvtoVAZ at nearly treble its $1.2-billion market capitalization – and was prone to legal and political vagaries.

Renault (RENA.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) shares ended up 0.83 percent at 34.12 euros. AvtoVAZ (AVAZ.MM: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) stock lost 7.09 percent after the parties signed a long-awaited framework agreement in Paris.

The purchase will be finalized only later this year and not implemented until 2014, according to a statement from the firms.

Agreed payments, notably to Moscow bank Troika Dialog (SBER.MM: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), put a $3-billion value on AvtoVAZ, maker of the boxy – and newly discontinued – Soviet-era icon, the Lada Classic.

“The deal appears quite expensive,” said Vladimir Bespalov, auto analyst at Russia’s VTB bank, who also voiced surprise at Renault choosing to buy in via a joint venture. But, he added, it offers Renault-Nissan a strategic hold in a fast-growing market which promises to soon overtake Germany in volume terms.

“We won’t see much growth in Europe, but the Russian auto market is growing quite well,” he said, forecasting the Lada name would remain as a low-cost brand while the alliance could expand by having AvtoVAZ also make Renault and Nissan marquees.

MOSCOW/NOVO-OGARYOVO, Russia (Reuters) – Russia and China will announce progress on a joint investment fund during a visit by the man expected to be China’s next premier, while their leaders hinted on Friday at differences behind a show of amity and common ground on global issues.

Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang, who is on track to succeed Premier Wen Jiabao this autumn, met Russian President-elect Vladimir Putin and outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev during a trip that will also take him to Hungary and Belgium.

Progress raising capital for a $4 billion fund seen as a boon for Russia’s efforts to attract Chinese investment is to be announced at a conference attended by Li on Saturday.

Plans for the fund – a venture between sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp and a Russian state vehicle – were announced in October and it is expecting to clinch its first deal in the summer.

“We see an opportunity to expand (the fund) because of other (investors around the world) exhibiting interest in participating,” Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund told Reuters in an interview on Friday.

The fund plans to announce that the venture will finalize its ‘first closing’ with $2 billion raised in June, said Dmitriev. “In June we will form it, and then in July/August we will do the first deal.”

The Russian Direct Investment Fund was created to give major foreign investors greater comfort in Russia’s uncertain business environment and is investing with private equity, strategic investors and sovereign wealth funds.

MOSCOW April 27 (Reuters) – Middle East investors are pumping $175 million into Russian power generator Enel OGK-5 in what is thought to be the largest injection by a Gulf investor into the country so far, members of the investment consortium said.

Italy’s Enel, which acquired a 56.4 percent stake in OGK-5 as part of reforms to break up Russia’s Soviet-era power monopoly, was not a party to the transaction.

Russia has been trying to attract investment from around the world for various projects and the Middle East’s oil wealth is a key area to tap. Investment so far from the region has been minimal, according to figures from London-based research firm Preqin.

“It’s the trillion dollar question,” Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s $10 billion state-backed investment fund, told Reuters, when asked why Middle East investors were shy about investing in Russia.

Dmitriev runs the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), created last year to co-invest alongside foreigners to give them greater comfort in Russia’s uncertain business environment, often criticised for corruption. The RDIF is among the consortium of investors in OGK-5.

“There are real issues with investing in Russia but also major perception gaps,” Dmitriev added.

He said the RDIF fund was created because “there was the sense that there were large investment pools all over the world and yet there was no concerted effort to communicate to them the Russian value proposition.”

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian freight firm Globaltrans Investment (GLTRq.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is buying the railcar unit of iron ore miner Metalloinvest for $540 million, boosting its fleet to around 60,000 units, it said on Friday, as it forecast more consolidation for the sector.

As part of the deal, Globaltrans will provide rail freight transportation and logistics services to Metalloinvest, controlled by Arsenal football club and Facebook shareholder Alisher Usmanov, Russia’s richest man, for three years.

“(The deal) will increase the market share of the company … and because of this three-year contract we will get access to a new cargo base,” Chief Executive Sergey Maltsev told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Globaltrans said its fleet of rolling stock was nearly 48,000 railcars at the end of 2011 while Metalloinvest’s was more than 9,000. The deal was a “very accretive acquisition of a high-quality asset”, finance chief Alexander Shenets said.

It will give Globaltrans a 7 percent market share of overall cargo volumes in Russia, the world’s largest country by territory, which relies on rail to deliver oil products, grain and steel to its home and export markets.

“It is an excellent strategic fit,” Shenets added.

CONSOLIDATION TREND

MOSCOW, April 26 (Reuters) – JP Morgan’s Russia head Jeff Costello is to retire and deputy CEO and head of investment banking, Yan Tavrovsky, will replace him, the bank said on Thursday.

Tavrovsky rejoined JP Morgan in 2010 from Morgan Stanley . He had previously worked at JP Morgan in Moscow and London from 2000 to 2005.

“I was at JPM for five years – I left and came back – and I’m very happy it was possible for me to take a greater role,” Tavrovsky told Reuters.

“Importantly, JPM is not just about investment banking but is about corporate banking and that is part of the excitement. We have a tremendous opportunity to grow in each of our product groups.”

Costello, 50, senior country officer for Russia and Ukraine and CEO of JP Morgan’s Russian bank, joined JP Morgan in 2008. He has lived in Russia since 1996.

“The plan when I joined in 2008 was to build out (the JPM business in Russia), build out the existing products and get the franchise to a market leadership position, and then replace myself,’ said Costello.

He will stay on as a non-executive director and will take over as chairman of the board of the local bank subsidiary for a period.

MOSCOW, April 25 (Reuters) – Russia’s largest gold firm Polyus Gold is talking to investors about placing a stake worth hundreds of millions of dollars as part of plans for a premium London stock market listing.

The company had been planning to announce plans for the move this week, but Russia’s extended May holiday break and market volatility might slow the process, several sources said. Polyus declined comment.

The firm had originally looked at selling a stake of 7.5-10.5 percent – worth up to $1 billion at its current valuation – but may scale back the sale due to choppy financial markets, one source familiar with the proposed transaction said.

Selling a smaller stake might delay Polyus’s goal of inclusion in the FTSE-100 share index, but that source said this was not an immediate concern.

“Let’s get the right listing, and the indexation will happen in the next year or so,” the source said.

A premium listing in London would put the company in a stronger position to take part in a wave of international mergers sweeping the metals and mining industry.

Polyus, worth about $10 billion and sitting on potentially lucrative gold reserves in Russia’s far east, is talking privately to institutions to try and place the shares, the sources said, bu t may widen its marketing effort via a bookbuilding process.