Eurasian Integration Yearbook 2012

Alexey Kuznetsov. “Monitoring Mutual Investmentsin CIS Countries”The Economics of the Post-Sovietand Eurasian Integration• projects representing failed attempts at overseas expansion (e.g., branchesof private Russian universities);• assets which were sold off as a result of business restructuring in particularcountries (e.g., large blocks of shares in Ukrainian power companies ownedby K. Grigorishin, a Russian citizen);• projects aimed initially at establishing a long-term presence in a countrybut which were terminated for economic or political reasons (e.g., MTS inTurkmenistan or Vimm-Bill-Dann in Uzbekistan);• parent investor companies which have been sold off because of financialproblems (bankruptcy) (e.g., the conglomerate owned by the Kazakhbusinessman M. Ablyazov, Soyuz-Viktan of Ukraine, which producesalcoholic drinks, and the Russian scrap-processing company MAIR).One additional category which should be mentioned involves Russiancompanies which were bought by investors from third countries as a footholdin the CIS from which to launch further expansion.5. Possible scientific and practical applicationof monitoringThe interesting results achieved by the MMI CIS to date appear to meritexpansion of this project beyond the post-Soviet space. This would involve theidentification and resolution of new scientific tasks and the widening of the FDImonitoring system itself.FDI has been playing a prominent role in most developed economies fordecades, and now there are numerous databases of various types on cross-borderinvestment projects. At the national level, the initial basis for many databases isprovided by statutory registration procedures, including registration of companieswith foreign capital (Adelkhanyan, 2012). Companies thus registered are subjectto frequent surveys, one-off inquires and other information-gathering exerciseson which official FDI statistics rely. Such information is very rarely published“project by project” for confidentiality reasons, yet there are precedents forthis. In Poland, for example, until the mid-2000s the State Agency on ForeignInvestment published information on all projects with FDI exceeding $1 million(according to poll data) and estimates of smaller projects twice a year. Althoughthis data was not official (since it was collected by other bodies), it was greatlyvalued by experts for its quality and prompt availability (IIEPS, 2006).Commercial databases on cross-border projects are much more diverse. Themost internationally renowned databases are Thomson Reuters and ThomsonONE Banker (for mergers and acquisitions) and FDI Intelligence (FinancialTimes Ltd.) (for greenfield projects). The analytical department of the Britishnewspaper the Financial Times uses unverified news from the mass media.However, the prompt supply of data coupled with a clever PR campaign whichEurasian Development Bank145