By Pavel Gagarin

Despite the huge investment potential, Russia is still considered by international investors as a high-risk area. The on going eurozone crisis also affects the evaluation of the Russian market. Continuity of power, provided by the recent presidential election, can reassure investors to some extent, as can Russia’s planned entry into the WTO.

Russian Consolidated Budget’s Surplus Reaches $7.5bn In January-February Revenues of Russia’s consolidated budget in January-February 2012 amounted to RUR2.9474tn ($97.5bn, or €75.5bn) and expenses equalled RUR2.7215tn ($90bn, or €69.7bn), according to a financial statement posted on the Russian Treasury’s website. This means that the consolidated budget had a surplus of RUR225.9bn ($7.5bn, or €5.8bn) for the specified period. The federal budget had a deficit of RUR199.6bn in January-February.

The consolidated budget of Russianregions was executed with a surplus of RUR73.6bn. Revenues totalled RUR874.8bn and expenses RUR801.2bn. Budgets of state extra-budget funds were executed with a surplus of RUR319.2bn and of territorial state extra-budget funds with a surplus of RUR32.9bn. (FC Novosti)

FOREX CLUB, a leading online broker, has won the 'Best Dealing Room' award at the 2012 World Finance Foreign Exchange Awards. The honour comes as a result of voting by the magazine's 60,000 global readership. The awards, now in their fifth year, recognise industry leaders and institutions that represent the benchmark of success and best practice in foreign exchange.

Market leaders Mail.ru, Vkontakte and Yandex, together with a further 40 speakers and 400 guests, will debate Russia's digital future at the digital conference, DLD Moscow, taking place from 27-29 May 2012, and is being held in the Russian metropolis for the first time. Russia is one of the fastest growing and leading European digital markets, as demonstrated by the user numbers and the capitalisation of internet giants such as Mail.ru, Vkontakte and Yandex. Among the 40 speakers will be Dmitry Grishin (CEO, Mail.Ru Group), Pavel Durov (CEO, Vkontakte) and Arkady Volozh (CEO, Yandex). Additionally, entrepreneurs, creative minds and experts from the international DLD community, such as Italian designer Lapo Elkann, Matt Michelsen of Lady Gaga's littlemonsters.com or Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima, will also be speaking at the conference.

The international airport of Sheremetyevo has summarized the May holiday flight program, which is traditionally a period of intense streams of air-passengers to and from vacation places. According to preliminary results, from April 25 till May 9 of 2012 Sheremetyevo airport served 1 million 040 thousand passengers, which is 14.2% more than the figure of the last year.

The passenger traffic on international airlines increased during the period of the May vacation by 15.2% and constituted 689.5 thousand people, on internal airlines it increased by 12.2% to 350.4 thousand passengers.

Steve Shor, Founder of the National Children's Leukemia Foundation (NCLF), a leading non-profit organization in the United States, and National Program Director Dr. Sara Gardin will address an entire delegation of prominent executives at Frost & Sullivan’s inaugural launch of its premier global congress on Growth, Innovation and Leadership – GIL 2012: Russia.  During the address, a monumental discovery in cancer research will be presented as announced for the first time on 9 May 2012 in London, UK.

The Henry Jackson Societyhas announced the launch of a new initiative - the Henry Jackson Initiative for Inclusive Capitalism (HJI) - to provide a platform for thought leadership, policy recommendation and the promotion of business initiatives aimed at extending the benefits of capitalism to a broader set of stakeholders and society at large.

Greece is the dominant issue affecting all global markets. Global market events continue to be the dominant driver of Russian asset prices and, while there will be more significant domestic news this week, the external influence is unlikely to diminish over the short term. Greece will continue to dominate global headlines as investor concerns have now shifted to "when" and with what collateral damage the country leaves the euro rather than "if". The first meeting between the newly elected French president and the German chancellor tomorrow will be important, as investors are hoping for evidence that the two can agree a common position and coordinated action rather than showing visible signs of polarization. The former would help contribute calm, while the latter would further knock sentiment and asset prices. Economic data in the US, on Tuesday and Wednesday, will also have a global impact. The hope is that either the data reverses the recent decline or elicits a sentiment-friendly response from the US Fed.

by Gordon Hahn

In recent remarks outgoing Russian President Dmitrii Medvedev declared himself to be a conservative. He made his remarks in a speech accepting a proposal to become a member and chairman of the Kremlin’s United Russia party (Irina Granik, “Ni razu ne liberal,” Kommersant, 28 April 2012). Unfortunately, there have been some grossly inaccurate and politicized ‘analyses’ of his remarks.

Globaltrans at end April announced that it would acquire 100% of Metalloinvesttrans, Metalloinvest’s captive rail freight operator, for $540 mln. We expect the deal to be completed very soon, and the company should be consolidated into Globaltrans’ financials from June. We plug this into our model, leaving all other assumptions unchanged. As a result, we raise our EBITDA forecasts by 14% for 2012 to $642 mln and 22% for 2013 to $764 mln. Our revised target price of $27.08 per GDR implies upside of 49% and warrants a BUY recommendation on the stock.