Russia's International Economic Forum

June 20, 2011

Russia's International Economic Forum is a great success!

This time, in addition to getting the supreme leader of China, the forum drew an impressive range of international corporate executives. Participants could listen to Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, talk about "The World According to Google," or Neil W. Duffin, president of ExxonMobil Development Company, talk about "New Paths to Energy Security." The roll call included the chairmen of Alcoa, Cisco, PwC International, Johnson & Johnson, International Paper, United Technologies, Morgan Stanley Bank, Bank of New York Mellon, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and Ernst & Young. Also present were presidents of Caterpillar, Sony Music, and the Boston Consulting Group, and the CEOs of Citigroup and of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.
A new factor, he said, is Russia's concerted drive, with American technical assistance, to join the World Trade Organization this year.
As recently as 2007, most foreign investors skipped this annual shindig, preferring to attend a rival Russia investment conference in London.
Then, in a shrewdly calculated move, the Kremlin sabotaged the London conference.
Russian authorities waited until the maximum number of investor participants had paid their multi-thousand dollar attendance fees for the London conference. Then Kremlin aides yanked the rug from underneath the London conference: they ordered all Russian ministers and oligarchs to stay home.
The London investment conference is no more.