克里姆林宫如何“摆平”寡头？

One surprising feature of the long-running scrap between the oligarchs Vladimir Potanin and Oleg Deripaska for control of Russia’s Norilsk Nickelis that the Kremlin let it fester for so long. Finally, it seems to have stepped in to sort it out.

俄罗斯寡头弗拉基米尔·波塔宁(Vladimir Potanin)和奥列格·德里帕斯卡(Oleg Deripaska)之间围绕俄罗斯诺里尔斯克镍公司(Norilsk Nickel)控制权的长期纷争中一个令人意外的地方是，克里姆林宫一直在放任这种斗争。俄政府似乎终于开始介入解决。

Last Friday, Mr Potanin was shown on television meeting President Vladimir Putin. Within days, reports emerged in Russian media – broadly confirmed by people in the know – that after talks initiated?some?weeks?ago by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a peace deal was in the offing at the world’s largest producer of nickel and palladium by volume.

上周五，电视上播出弗拉基米尔·普京(Vladimir Putin)会见波塔宁的场景。几天之后，俄媒体就开始报道（基本上得到知情人士的证实），几周前由俄总理德米特里·梅德韦杰夫(Dmitry Medvedev)发起商谈之后，按产量计算世界上最大的镍和钯制造商将达成一个和平协议。

One scenario would include Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich, as a “friendly third party, taking a stake that would reduce the ownership influence of Mr Potanin’s group, though the latter would become Norilsk chief executive. Norilsk would also pay out higher dividends, which Mr Deripaska has long demanded.

一种可能性是，让切尔西足球俱乐部(Chelsea football club)老板罗曼·阿布拉莫维奇(Roman Abramovich)成为一个“友好的第三方，买下一定股份，以降低波塔宁集团的持股比例，尽管波塔宁将成为诺里尔斯克的首席执行官。诺里尔斯克也可能会支付更高的股息，而这正是德里帕斯卡一直以来的要求。

Such a solution would be in some ways positive. With Mr Putin back as president for a third term, the Kremlin seems to be seeking to resolve some longstanding shareholder disputes that have cast a pall over Russia’s investment climate.

从某些方面来看，这种解决方式是积极的。在普京的第三个总统任期中，俄政府似乎正在寻求解决给俄罗斯投资环境蒙上阴影的一些长期股权纷争。

First came TNK-BP, whose 50-50 structure between Russian and British shareholders had irked the president seemingly from the moment he blessed the deal in 2003. The particular way this was resolved, however, through state-controlled Rosneft’s takeover of oil industry assets that were already well run – despite the shareholder dispute – is arguably negative for Russia’s economy.

首先就是俄罗斯和英国股东各占50%股权的秋明英国石油公司(TNK-BP)，自从2003年普京总统对合资协议给予赞赏以来，这种股权结构似乎一直在困扰着他。然而，具体解决方式——由国有的俄罗斯石油公司(Rosneft)接管已经运营很好（尽管存在股东纷争）的石油业资产——可以说对俄罗斯经济是消极的。

Yet Norilsk, as a privately owned national champion, is a slightly different case. As Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Sberbank-CIB, notes, the debilitating, four-year power struggle has left the company “in a rut. Resolving it could help Norilsk move forward, receive new state licences for developing deposits and start fulfilling its potential as a Russian BHP Billiton.

然而，私有的国家冠军企业诺里尔斯克的情况稍有不同。俄罗斯联邦储蓄银行(Sberbank-CIB)首席策略师克里斯·威弗(Chris Weafer)指出，四年的权力纷争让该公司陷入“停滞。解决这个问题，就可能推动诺里尔斯克向前迈步，获得新的国家执照，开发矿藏，开始实现其作为“俄罗斯必和必拓的潜力。

Raising Norilsk’s dividend payout could also reinforce the government’s attempts to do the same at state-controlled companies, not least Rosneft. That, in turn, could help close the gap in dividend payout rates between Russia and other emerging markets and give a boost to its flagging stock market.

提高诺里尔斯克的股息支付率，也可能促使政府在国有控股企业做出同样的努力，尤其是俄罗斯石油公司。这进而有助于缩小俄罗斯和其他新兴市场国家之间在股息支付率上的差异，提振该国疲弱的股市。

But should the Norilsk case be resolved in this way, it would send negative messages, too. It shows that the Kremlin remains the only effective arbiter in such tycoon stand-offs. Without a properly independent court or arbitration system, there?are?few?other?ways?of settling disputes – apart from contracting out the job to an external venue such as London’s High Court, which oligarchs have increasingly been doing. But Mr Putin has signalled he prefers disputes to be settled in Russia.

但如果诺里尔斯克的问题以这种方式得到解决，也会发出一些消极的信号。它告诉人们，在寡头对峙中，克里姆林宫是唯一有效的“仲裁者。在俄罗斯没有一个适当独立的司法或者仲裁体系的情况下，除了将问题提交伦敦高等法院(High Court)等外部机构（这是寡头们越来越倾向的做法）以外，很少有其他的争端解决方式。但普京曾暗示，他希望相关争端能够在俄罗斯解决。

Mr Abramovich’s potential role also highlights how the system frequently relies on Kremlin-friendly intermediaries. Another player here is Alisher Usmanov, whose Metalloinvestmetals group owns

阿布拉莫维奇的潜在作用也突显出，体制往往依赖与克里姆林宫友好的中间人。另一个操盘手是阿利舍尔·乌斯马诺夫(Alisher Usmanov)，他的Metalloinvest金属集团持有诺里尔斯克4%的股权，而他掌控的俄罗斯移动运营商Megafon最近在伦敦和莫斯科上市，筹资17亿美元。

4 per cent of Norilsk – and whose Megafonmobile phone company completed a $1.7bn listing in London and Moscow this week.

乌斯马诺夫在涉及Megafon、在欧洲各国法庭激烈开打的公司纠纷中两度扮演调解者角色。在第一次调解中，他买断了据称与俄罗斯最高层政界人士有联系的投资基金所持股份，此前这些基金与Megafon的另一个股东、米哈伊尔·弗里德曼(Mikhail Fridman)的阿尔法集团(Alfa Group)一个部门存在纷争。

Mr Usmanov twice acted as peacemaker in bitterly fought corporate disputes around Megafon that had played out across European courtrooms. First he bought out investment funds with alleged ties to top Russian politicians, which had fought with another Megafon shareholder, a unit of Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Group.

当乌斯马诺夫自己与阿尔法和第三方股东、瑞典的TeliaSonera起冲突的时候，他在今年4月收购了阿尔法所持的25%股份，他的收获是，如今他在一家伦敦上市公司持有控股权。

Then, after himself clashing with Alfa and a third shareholder, Sweden’s TeliaSonera, Mr Usmanov acquired Alfa’s 25 per cent stake in April this year. His prize was a controlling stake in a now London-listed business.

接近乌斯马诺夫的人否认他在Megafon事务中扮演的角色是为了帮克里姆林宫一个忙。但很多分析师持相反的见解，指出，在普京承诺“清算寡头阶级十几年之后，俄罗斯政商之间依然存在强大联系，尽管其形式已得到洗牌。

People close to Mr Usmanov have denied his role in Megafon was a favour to the Kremlin. But many analysts believe otherwise and suggest that, a dozen years after Mr Putin vowed to “liquidate the oligarchs as a class, the intertwining of Russian business and politics remains as strong as ever, albeit in a reordered form.

政治科学家叶夫根尼·明琴科(Yevgeny Minchenko)在最近的一份报告中指出，今天的俄罗斯由一个由高级官员、安全部门人员、商界人士组成的非正式团队掌控着。他用苏联时代的意象称其为“政治局2.0。其中的一个成员就是俄罗斯石油首席执行官伊戈尔·谢欣(Igor Sechin)。政治局“候选委员是阿布拉莫维奇和乌斯马诺夫，还有波塔宁、德里帕斯卡、弗里德曼。而普京是他们的“仲裁者和调解者。在外国公司看来，这一切使得俄罗斯看起来令人头晕，难以拿捏。同时，这也引发了对于由一个人说了算的商业体系稳定性的疑问，尤其是鉴于这个人在过去几个月里对权力的掌控比过去稍弱。

Yevgeny Minchenko, a political scientist, suggested in a recent report that Russia was today run by an informal group of senior officials, security men and business people. He called this, using Soviet-era imagery, “politburo 2.0. One member was Igor Sechin, Rosneft’s chief executive. Among politburo “candidate members were Mr Abramovich and Mr Usmanov – plus Messrs Potanin, Deripaska and Fridman. Mr Putin was “arbiter and moderator. All this can make Russia a bewildering environment for foreign companies to navigate. But it also raises questions about the stability of a business system where so much depends on the say-so of one man – especially one whose grip on power in the past few months has seemed a little weaker than it once was.

尼尔·巴克利(Neil Buckley)是英国《金融时报》东欧版主编

Neil Buckley is the FT’s Eastern Europe editor