City of London Mayor will advise Moscow

July 8, 2011, 17:28 / Advisory / Jurisdictions: Russia, Great Britain, Source: International Relations & Trade

The Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Michael Bear, is in Russia with a delegation of city businessmen. He has a packed schedule in Moscow and St Petersburg but the pivotal day will be spent as co-chairman with Alexander Voloshin of the the first meeting of the UK – Russia Liaison Group on the development of Moscow as an international financial centre.

The Lord Mayor’s deputy in the committee is the Sherriff of London, Alderman David Wootton. Both the Lord Mayor and Mr. Wootton are agreed that Russia is too big to ignore. “For years it has been punching consistently below its weight,” wrote the Lord Mayor in City AM newspaper on Monday.

“Russia’s potential is almost limitless,” Mr. Wootton told 150 businessmen at a London forum last week. “It is too big, too important and too richly resourced not to be a key player in the global framework.”

The Lord Mayor wrote that “International investors need reassuring that Russia values certainty, predictability and transparency, especially with regards to the rule of law.

He will find a ready advocate of that message in Alexander Voloshin, the former Kremlin Chief of Staff to both President Boris Yeltsin and President Vladimir Putin. Last year he said that Moscow should “learn from London.”

He told a conference, "We should be open and welcoming to those who come here to do business."

He also said increasing the number of international staff in Russian companies and the financial industry's share in the city's budget by up to 30-40 per cent would also benefit the success of the centre.

But while advising Russia on how to become an international financial centre in its own right, the Lord Mayor will also be watching the city’s back.

“With an IPO market that offers an internationally respected business environment with significant advantages – deep pools of capital, a broad investor base, and high standards of corporate governance – London has traditionally been the centre of choice for Russian companies looking to raise capital,” he wrote in the city’s newspaper.

“But we cannot afford to be complacent, with recent reports indicating Russian firms are increasingly keen on listing in Far Eastern markets,” he wrote against a background of mixed results for Russian IPO’s in London this year.

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