Boris Jordan, president and CEO of $2 billion investment fund the Sputnik Group, said political interference in business remains a serious concern in Russia.

The government is starting to emerge as a ‘competitor’ against private business in areas such as the oil industry, acting as a brake on development, Jordan told the Reuters Russia Investment Summit.

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Russia’s mobile phone industry should continue to outgrow the wider economy for years to come, reckons Alexander Izosimov, CEO of the country’s No.2 mobile phone company Vimpelcom.

Even though the market is nearing saturation point, Izosimov told the Reuters Russia Investment Summit that expanding infrastructure, increasing useage and the growing sophistication of clients will ensure strong growth rates.

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Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil firm, plans no major acquisitions for now and and its chief focus is on integrating assets is has bought recently, Chief Financial Officer Peter O’Brien told the Reuters Russia Investment Summit.

State-controlled Rosneft has this year snapped up production and refining assets of fallen oil major YUKOS auctioned off by Russia’s receiver. O’Brien, an American, dismissed speculation that Rosneft was interested in Russia’a No.4 oil firm Surgut or midsized player Russneft.

But if refining assets in Russia’s autonomous republic of Bashkiria do come up for sale, Rosneft would be interested, O’Brien said.

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Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil company, is considering a return to the Eurobond market after postponing an offering in July due to market volatility, Chief Financial Officer Peter O’Brien told the Reuters Russia Investment Summit.

The Eurobond would be “benchmark” sized, or worth around $2 billion, and Rosneft is looking for a maturity of 5-10 years.

Rosneft plans to refinance a “very large share” of an $11 billion bridge loan it raised for acquisitions by the end of this year, and the remainder by September 2008, O’Brien also said in a wide-ranging interview.

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Russia’s banking system is coping well with a liquidity crunch stemming from the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis, top central banker Konstantin Korishchenko told the Reuters Russia Investment Summit.

In a wide-ranging interview Korishchenko, the central bank’s point man for exchange rate policy, said he did not expect forthcoming presidential elections to lead to instability in Russia’s rouble currency. Russia has the world’s third-largest central bank reserves — of over $400 billion — enough to steady the rouble “for two elections”, Korishchenko said.

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Alexander Branis, chief investment officer of $4 billion stock fund Prosperity Capital Management, expects flatlining Russian stocks to rerate once investors feel more comfortable about political risks.

Concerns about the succession to President Vladimir Putin are overdone, Branis told the Reuters Russia Investment Summit. He is placing bets in the power and infrastructure sectors to profit from an accelerating investment boom in Russia.

Prosperity’s flagship Russia fund has outperformed the benchmark RTS index by 6.5 percentage points this year, while its specialist funds have done better. The Russian Prosperity Fund has posted compound annual returns of 33.5 percent since inception in 1996, while its Prosperity Quest power fund has returned an annualised 91.1 percent since 1999.