Month: September 2012

“We try to hide religiously,” explained Steven Feinberg, the CEO of a takeover firm called Cerberus Capital Management that recently drove one of its targets into bankruptcy after saddling it with $2.3 billion in debt. “If anyone at Cerberus has his picture in the paper and a picture of his apartment, we will do more than fire that person,” Feinberg told shareholders in 2007. “We will kill him. The jail sentence will be worth it.”

BORIS BEREZOVSKY’S present has now been returned. One day in 2007 Mr Berezovsky, the exiled Russian oligarch, pounced on his onetime business partner and now sworn rival, Roman Abramovich, in a Hermès boutique in London. “I have a present for you,” Mr Berezovsky reportedly said, serving him with a writ for what would become a $5 billion lawsuit—the largest in British history.

 

At its core, the case centered on whether, as Mr Berezovsky claimed, Mr Abramovich threatened him into selling his share of the Russian oil major Sibneft, along with other assets, at a greatly undervalued price after Mr Berezovsky fell out with President Vladimir Putin and fled Russia in 2000. (Mr Berezovsky parted with his stake of Sibneft for $1.3 billion in 2001; Mr Abramovich sold his own stake of the company for $11.9 billion in 2005.) For his part, Mr Abramovich said that Mr Berezovsky never owned a part of Sibneft at all, but rather that Mr Abramovich paid him for krysha, which literally means “roof,” but in the world of Russian business suggests a combination of access, protection, and generally making sure the necessary things happen and the unwelcome things don’t.-from the Economist