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Europe to Limit Sovereign Investments
European Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia confirmed yesterday the EC intention to limit investments of sovereign wealth funds into the assets in Europe. If passed, the restrictions will extend to the Stabilization Fund of Russia.
According to Joaquin Almunia, the EU governments and the European Parliament would have the drafts with respective restrictions in the nearest weeks. At the same time, the commissioner didn’t shed light on the essence of restrictions to be imposed on investment funds controlled by foreign governments to protect the national interests of recipient states.
The matter at stake is creating some common guidelines for working with foreign state capital, Almunia signaled, specifying that the European Commission will meet to mull over the issue in early December.
So far, the EU has been officially considering two packages of documents that could be viewed as a hurdle en route of Russia’s money to Europe. The first one suggests reorganizing electric power and gas distribution branches of the EU in an effort to prevent owners of production assets from managing network and trading assets in Europe. Passing this amendment in the toughest wording will strip Russia’s Gazprom off a number of assets.
The second package provides for the mutual access requirement. It would hit all companies of Russia should our parliament OK the bill on foreign investment restrictions.
But there is one more package, Almunia made clear yesterday. It will limit investing business of future divisions of Russia’s Stabilization Fund – the Reserve Fund and the National Wealth Fund - as well as investments of Russia’s state banks, Sberbank and VTB, and development institutions, including Rosnanotekh, Development Bank (VEB), Rostekhnologii.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 30, 2007
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