Big business in the Russian economy and politics under Putin’s rule

Abstract:

The pace of ownership transfer in the Russian economy has speeded up considerably over the last year. There has been a significant rise in the number of acquisitions of whole enterprises, and large blocks of shares in individual firms and plants. Similarly the number of mergers, bankruptcies and take-overs of failing firms by their strongest competitors has grown.

The ongoing consolidation of individual industrial-financial groups in Russia, the expansionism inside a specific sector, and the expansion of activities into other sectors all have their own special processes and consequences, both economic and political. One common feature of these processes is a trend towards monopolisation of certain sectors of the economy.