As Russia Stumbles, Gazprom Comes Up $910 Billion Short -- Bloomberg Businesswee
Back in April 2007, in the midst of the greatest commodities rally on record, OAO Gazprom’s (OGZD) deputy chief executive officer, Alexander Medvedev, was talking big.
Russia’s natural-gas export monopoly aspired to be the world’s largest company, he said while offering up a prediction: its market value would quadruple to $1 trillion in as little as seven years.
Medvedev was off by $910 billion. Since he made that forecast, no company among the world’s top 5,000 has suffered a bigger collapse in market capitalization than Gazprom, a $154 billion plunge that’s become emblematic of the malaise that has overtaken President Vladimir Putin’s economy. The state-run company has tumbled three straight years in the stock market as it stepped up spending on everything from the Olympic games in Sochi to projects in Siberia.
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My Comment: Gazprom is the "slush fund" that permits Russia's elite and government to fund their programs and lifestyles. I am not going to shed a tear learning that the "good times" have not occurred.
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