Savik Shuster, investors part ways after dispute; Ukraine arms exports surge in early 2009; Mitsubishi beefs up presence in Ukraine; Cash-strapped Ukraine to sell chemical plant.
Savik Shuster, investors part ways after dispute
Shuster Live, the popular political talk show run by Savik Shuster, aired its last program before summer break on July 10. But the future of the program has been cast into doubt after news broke this week that relation have soured between Shuster and the investor behind his Savik Shuster Studios company, Pakistani-born businessman Mohammad Zahoor.
Zahoor is cash-rich after selling a mini-steel mill he owned in Donetsk about a year before the global financial crisis broke. But his relations with Shuster are worsening. According to a July 14 report in Segodnya newspaper, Zahoor’s ISTIL Group demands that the studio be renamed ISTIL Studios. Shuster opposed was quoted by Segodnya as saying: “I have quit.” Shuster went on to say that he will launch a new studio and political talk show. He said that he is currently in talks on striking a direct agreement with his show’s current television broadcaster, TRK Ukraina. The channel is owned by Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov.
Ukraine arms exports surge in early 2009
Ukraine’s state-controlled arms trading companies have inked $750 million worth of export contracts in the first half of 2009, just short of the $800 million in record sales for all of last year, an informed source told Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
The sharp and sudden boost in arms exports is largely attributed to a large, $400 million contract inked this year with India. Ukrainian companies will modernize 105 An-23 military transportation aircraft owned by India. This contract was the second largest in independent Ukraine’s history, trailing only a 1996 one worth $650 million in which Ukraine supplied 105 tanks to Pakistan.
Ukraine is still far behind leading arms exporting countries such as the United States and Russia in contracts, but has in recent years consistently ranked as one of the world’s top ten exporters of arms and military technologies.
Mitsubishi beefs up presence in Ukraine
Japan’s Mitsubishi group of companies is beefing up its presence in Ukraine, offering the country state of the art technologies after Japan and Ukraine this year inked a multi-billion-dollar carbon credit deal under the Kyoto Protocol, with the aim of making Ukraine’s industry more energy efficient.
At a July 10 meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries board chairman Kazuo Tsukuda revealed his company would set up a representative office in Ukraine. Tymoshenko praised the move and her government’s recent agreements with Japan and Mitsubishi saying: “A company with an annual turnover exceeding $300 billion is coming to Ukraine. This is the real fulfillment of agreements I reached while visiting Japan” earlier this year. Japan is to provide Ukraine in coming years with billions of dollars worth of technologies and equipment needed for modernization and energy efficiency efforts, according to a series of bilateral agreements signed earlier this year. Kyiv agreed to sell Japan a large share of its carbon credit (and equivalent) emission units under the Kyoto Protocol.
In a related deal announced on July 15, Mitsubishi and another Japanese company, Sumitomo, signed a four-way agreement with Ukraine’s National Space Agency and National Agency for Efficient Energy Use to build wind power generation units in cooperation with Dnipropetrovsk-based Yuzhmash, a state-owned manufacturer of space rockets, satellites, agricultural equipment, buses, trams and wind turbines.
Cash-strapped Ukraine to sell chemical plant
Ukraine’s State Property Fund announced on July 15 that it had launched a privatization tender for a 99.6 percent stake in a prized chemical enterprise, Odesa Portside Plant.
The sale is seen as an attempt by the cash-strapped Ukrainian government to raise badly-needed extra cash. The privatization of the plant has been put off numerous times in recent years. With the world still deep in recession and bidders cut off from credit, holding a sale this year is expected to generate significantly less than the $1 billion Ukraine’s government hoped to raise last year in a sale that was blocked by President Victor Yushchenko. Ukraine’s privatization agency set the starting price for the auction at Hr 4 billion, about $500 million. It is to take place within 75 days. Bidders registered in offshore tax havens are prohibited from taking part in the tender.Top chemical conglomerates from across the globe, including those controlled by billionaires in Ukraine and Russia, have expressed interest in acquiring Odesa Portside. The export-oriented plant is strategically located in the city of Yuzhny, on the Black Sea and near Odesa.
