Highlights of St. Petersburg’s major events in figures and photographs

Number and status of participants 

The forum was attended by 5,000 delegates, including five heads of states, over 220 CEOs of foreign companies and 500 CEOs of Russian corporations. 

Gross volume of contracts 

The aggregated volume of agreements signed at the forum totaled 200bln rubles, or about 5bln euros, a sum that is commensurate with the total volume of contracts signed at last year’s forum, which was also about 5bln euros. In all, over 50 agreements were signed at this year’s forum, the largest and most significant one being Russia’s purchase of two French helicopters Mistral for 1.2mln euros. Other important agreements included contracts signed by Russian and Spanish companies for a total sum of 800mln euros.  

Changes in government politics

• Official rejection of ‘state capitalism’ via drastic reduction of the role of government in the economy and provision of new incentives for investors. To achieve this, the government plans to reduce its shareholding in state companies not just to 50%, as currently proposed by the Cabinet, but to blocking stakes or even down to zero. 
• The list of first “candidates” earmarked for privatization includes about 50 companies, recently taken out of the so-called “list of enterprises of strategic importance to the state.” Thus, the government has been ordered to completely review and expand the scope of its already approved privatization plan by August 1. This will increase the revenue from privatization by 1.5 times to 450mln rubles in 2012, instead of the previously projected figure of 300bln rubles. 
• To revoke a myriad of existing restrictions on placement, floating and listing stocks of leading Russian companies on key stock exchanges in foreign countries. 
• Plans to grant long-term, multiple entry and exist business visas to all large ‘strategic’ investors doing businesses in Russia

Declaration of intentions

• Russia’s largest bank Sberbank, in cooperation with western partners, intends to create a new bank for financing innovative startups this year. 
• Banking group VTB has announced plan to attract a record syndicated loan of over $2.5bln. 
• Russian autogiants AvtoVAZ and Izhavto plan to attract about 50bln rubles over the next three years in form of loans to bankroll their investment programs.  

• Russian Foundation Skolkovo and German corporation Siemens AG signed an agreement to set up a Siemens R&D facility in the Skolkovo innovation center at an estimated cost of 60mln euros. Of this sum, Siemens is expected to put 40mln euros, while the Skolkovo Foundation will put up 20mln euros. 
• Russian Technologies Corp. and French-U.S. telecommunication and computer company Alcatel-Lucent announced plans to create a joint venture for the development and creation of equipment for the LTE network. 
• Russian Nanotechnologies Corp., in cooperation with South-Korean Institute for Advancement of Technology and two other international companies have signed an MoU on setting up the Asia Nanotechnology Fund (ANF) with capitalization value of about $100mln. The ANF’s headquarters will be located in South Korea, while its Russian subsidiary office will be in St. Petersburg. 
• LUKoil, one of the biggest oil companies in Russia, and Sovkomflot signed a two-year contract to supply marine lubricants. Overall, the agreement included 67 items totaling 20,000 tons.