Steven Tishman has joined Houlihan Lokey as Global Head of M&A. Previously Steven was co-head of U.S. M&A at Rothschild.

Houlihan Lokey, one of the largest global private investment banks is currently taking steps to actively expand its services in Eastern Europe and the CIS. It currently covers these regions from European offices and have already completed several high-profile mandates in Russia, Kazakhstan and Eastern Europe in the two years since the coverage team was established. Several high-profile projects completed to-date include a comprehensive valuation of the assets of Russian holding En+ Group, along with providing advisory services on the restructuring of the group’s foreign debt during 2009-2010, and also advising Kazakhstan-based Shalkiya Zinc on their takeover during 2010-2011. The firm is ranked globally as the No.1 M&A fairness opinion advisor over the past 10 years, the No.1 restructuring advisor, and the No.1 M&A advisor for U.S. transactions under $1 billion by Thomson Reuters.

By Andrei Skvarsky.

Two senators have urged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to consider banning entry into the US for two senior Russian police officials who are believed to be complicit in the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

Earlier, the State Department put dozens of Russian officials blamed for Magnitsky’s death on a no-visa list after Russian authorities refused to take action against them.

Generals Tatiana Gerasimova and Nikolai Shelepanov, senior figures in the Russian Interior Ministry’s criminal investigation arm, are planning a visit to Washington to discuss intellectual property rights.

They will, however, end up on the visa ban list under recent US human rights laws if the initiative of Senators Roger Wicker and Benjamin Cardin goes through, according to a statement from Hermitage.

Magnitsky was arrested on a tax evasion charge after launching an investigation into an alleged $230m tax fraud in government. The gravely sick 37-year-old man died in a Moscow remand jail two years ago after being denied essential medical care.

Russian authorities launched a low-key probe into his death last summer, but weeks later came up with resuscitated posthumous tax evasion proceedings against him.

By Andrei Skvarsky.

A British man accused of helping mastermind a fraud at beleaguered Kazazakh bank BTA bas been sentenced to 21 months in a UK slammer for contempt of court.

The court ruled that Paul Kythreotis lied in testimony and failed to turn over documents related to his role in helping former chairman Mukhtar Ablyazov to steal funds.

BTA was the central Asian country’s biggest lender before its nationalisation in 2009. The bank defaulted on $12bn of its debt last year before a painful restructuring.

Criminal justice has been served

By Andrei Skvarsky.

Canada is considering joining the United States in denying entry visas to Russian officials blamed for the death in jail of Hermitage Capital fund lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

“The ongoing impunity, and indeed, in this instance shocking impunity regarding Russian officials is as scandalous as it is shocking,” Irwin Cotler, a member of Canada’s Parliament, said in introducing a bill to the legislature that would slap a visa ban on the officials’ families as well as on themselves.

 “This legislation will uphold the rule of law, will assure Russian human rights defenders that they are not alone, will protect Canadian business interests in Russia, and in particular will remember and honour the heroic sacrifice of Sergei Magnitsky,” Cotler said. “He acted on behalf of all of us in his protection of the rule of law.”

Earlier, officials implicated in the Magnitsky case came under a US visa ban, and the European Union is mulling visa sanctions as well.

In a tit-for-tat response, Moscow came up with a list of American officials to be denied entry to Russia.

By Andrei Skvarsky.

Barclays Bank's Russian unit will focus on investment banking after offloading its retail and commercial banking operations in Russia under a deal it has just signed with investors including banker Igor Kim. The deal follows a February 15 announcement by the British institution that it would close its retail and commercial banking business in Russia.

Barclays is one of several foreign banks that have been shutting or curtailing their Russian operations and have included HSBC and BNP Paribas.

By Eric Kraus, author of the Truth and Beauty (and Russian Finance). The good news is that we have a ringside seat for the decline of the West… the bad news – we are inside the ring! The miserable thing about being a seer is that when you get it right – no one remembers – when wrong, not one forgets! Actually, it may be worse to get it right since what seemed bold and provocative predictions a decadeago – the secular rise of China, the birth of a multi-polar world, the Malthusian struggle for resources – become banalities so widely held that one no longer dares reiterate them for fear of ridicule. When not totally distracted by the flashing of electronic digits on an LCD screen, T&B has been known to muse on some of the Great Questions – inter alia: “Why here?”; “Why now” (i.e. at this particular time in a 14 billion-year history); “are we approaching a discontinuum...?” If, very unexpectedly, we find any definitive answers tonight, we shall include them in an appendix. For now, suffice

By Marcus Williams.

Ashmore Investment Management is launching an emerging market small-cap equity fund to complement its existing large-cap vehicle.

The new fund will be managed by AshmoreEMM, a member of Ashmore Group, according to a statement from the London-listed firm.

Felicia Morrow, CEO of AshmoreEMM, said the fund will offer exposure to domestic growth stories from China to frontier markets.

She said: "In Emerging Markets, small-cap securities have outperformed large caps in 7 of the past 10 years. Securities selected for the fund will consist primarily of companies with a market capitalisation of up to $2 billion at the time of investment."

By Eric Kraus, author of Truth and Beauty (and Russian Finance). The major story is, of course, the return of Vladimir Putin to the Russian presidency – an outcome which we always thought likely given that Medvedev seemed a deeply counterintuitive choice for the Russian presidency. Totally lacking in charisma and with no experience of politics, he was singularly unsuited to lead a country like Russia – with its long history of personalization of power.

By Marcus Williams. Britain has blacklisted at least 60 Russian officials implicated in the 2009 prison death of Hermitage Capital's lawyer  Sergei Magnitksy. The move mirrors a measure taken by the US in July that prompted the Russian Foreign Ministry to retaliate with a ban on US officials. The decision to impose visa sanctions on the Russian officials in Magnitsky case was made by the UK Home Office. Shadow Justice Minister, Chris Bryant MP, said the visa ban had been confirmed to him by UK Immigration Minister Damian Green, according to the UK Observer newspaper. Labour MP Bryant said: “From conversations with Damian Green I took it that these people would not be welcomed, it seems now as if there is a secret ban on these list of people.” Documents revealed by the Observer show that a number of government officials and Russian criminals named by Sergei Magnitsky as perpetrators of the $230 million theft have regularly traveled to the UK in the last five years. Artem Kuznetsov and Pavel Karpov, two Interior Ministry officers accused by Magnitsky of playing a key role in the $230 million theft scheme, travelled to London in March 2006. The British move is bound to frustrate efforts to reset Anglo-Russian relations which have floundered even after Prime Minister David Cameron's visit to Moscow last month. Relations took a nosedive in November 2009 when Magnitsky  died in a squalid Moscow prison after being jailed for almost a year without trial for a tax crime he insisted he did not commit.

By Andrei Skvarsky.

Russian brokerage Renaissance Capital’s London-based operation recorded a 25% drop in its revenues for last year due to a change of strategy.

The London firm’s revenues plunged by $17m to $52m in 2010 due to its changed strategy of earning its income from commissions on a brokerage basis, rather than by profiting from trades using its own capital, according to the Financial News website.

The London broker's net trading income, primarily from equities, fell by 94% to $2.9m last year, though brokerage and advisory fees grew by 133% to $49.3m.

By Andrei Skvarsky.

Britain and Russia have signed an agreement to boost investment opportunities in Russia for UK-based private equity investors as recent major corporate failures have cast a shadow over the future of British business in Russia.

UK Trade and Investment and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) signed the deal during British Prime Minister David Cameron's visit to Russia, whose apparent task was to try to repair relations heavily damaged by the 2006 Litvinenko affair.

The UK Trade and Investment and RDIF chiefs, Lord Green and Kirill Dmitriev, both said there exist “huge opportunities” for British investment in Russia and vice versa, according to US-based website PRNewswire.

Another remarkable event during Cameron’s visit was the unveiling of a new British medical company, Pro Bono Bio, where Russian state-owned nanotechnology corporation RusNano is taking a stake of more than 40%.

Yet these developments are unlikely to change the overall less-than-radiant picture of British corporate presence in Russia, with two key banks, HSBC and Barclays, pulling the plug on their Russian retail business and BP failing to strike a deal on Arctic shelf exploration with Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft, which opted for ExxonMobil as its partner in the potentially lucrative project.

By Andrei Skvarsky.

British banks HSBC and Barclays, along with oil major BP, are fading from Russia just as UK Prime Minister David Cameron arrives in Moscow on Monday to try to reverse a nadir in British-Russian relations.

HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, has shut its modest Russian retail network after committing $200m for building it out just a few years ago, and has recently sold it to Citigroup. Barclays is selling its retail and commercial banking business in Russia to Kazcommertzbank, Kazakhstan’s biggest lender.

BP, whose chief executive Bob Dudley will be among businessmen accompanying Cameron on his visit, was this month frozen out of a big-scale and potentially lucrative project as Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft struck a deal with ExxonMobil to explore the Arctic shelf. A day later BP suffered the indignity of having its Moscow office raided by court officers and special forces.

The raid was part of a legal action brought in by minority shareholders in TNK-BP, the UK oil giant’s Russian joint venture, who are seeking billions of dollars in compensation for profits that they claim the failed BP-Rosneft deal has deprived them of.

BP has “egregiously, repeatedly mismanaged its relations with its Russian partners, AAR, with whom it is now locked in another round of legal wrangling in Russian courts,” Eric Kraus, author of the Truth and Beauty (and Russian Finance), told EmergingMarkets.me.

Anglo-Russian relations had sunk to new lows following the 2006 murder by polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London. Russia continues to refuse British requests to extradite the chief suspect in the murder, former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi, who received parliamentary immunity inside Russia after being elected to an MP post following the attack

Hostilities stirred by the Litvinenko's murder resulted in tit-for-tat expulsions of Russian and British diplomats and the harassment of former ambassador Tony Brenton by the Nashi youth group.

“In recent years, British foreign policy has been seen in Moscow as overtly hostile, as the UK foreign policy establishment essentially aligned itself with the US neocon faction,” said Kraus, who is independent asset manager.

“The Kremlin has taken badly the hectoring tone, as well as the propensity of the UK to grant asylum to individuals accused in Russia of terrorism or fraud - especially  those wealthy enough to hire PR firms and provide political donations.”

Relations took a nosedive again in November 2009 when Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage Capital, died in a squalid Moscow prison after being jailed for almost a year without trial for a tax crime he insisted he did not commit.

William Browder, the founder of UK-based Hermitage Capital Management, said the British government had shied away from tackling Russia on human rights and wants Cameron to slap travel bans to the UK on the officials implicated.

By Andrei Skvarsky.

HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, has launched an emerging markets fund onto the London Stock Exchange.

The Irish-domiciled HSBC MSCI Emerging Markets Exchange Trade Fund will replicate the performance of the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) emerging markets index, which tracks the performance of major companies in countries such as Brazil, Russia, China and India, according to www.fundweb.co.uk, a website run by British magazine Fund Strategy.

The ETF will use physical replication of the index and has a total expense ratio of 0.6%

By Andrei Skvarsky.

Sergei Magnitsky’s mother has been summoned for an interrogation as part of the tax evasion case reopened against the Hermitage Capital lawyer in July, 20 months after his death in a Moscow jail.

Natalia Magnitskaya will be questioned as a witness by police officers whom Hermitage accuses of torturing the anti-corruption lawyer to death, the British fund said in a statement.

Magnitskaya’s planned interrogation on September 8 is “a cynical and cruel action designed to suppress his family’s efforts in seeking justice”, Hermitage said.

“The officers who tortured Magnitsky in custody, now, almost two years after his death, are trying to pressure his relatives into withdrawing their public call for justice.”

Magnitsky was arrested for alleged tax evasion after accusing senior officials of stealing $230m from the state through a tax scam. A gravely sick man, he died in a remand prison of lack of essential medical care.

This summer the Investigative Committee issued a conclusion blaming prison officials for Magnitsky’s death, but almost immediately the Prosecutor General’s Office resumed tax evasion proceedings against the lawyer.