On their web page Renaissance Capital is promoting their 12th Annual Investor Conference by citing my comments about attending their conference last year. (Click here to read RenCap's quote from Russia Blog).

In 2007 Renaissance Capital's keynote speaker was Gen. (ret.) and former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. This year the featured speakers are former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

This year, Renaissance Capital and its associates will have a lot to celebrate. In spite of the American and British-sparked global credit crisis and its negative impact on equities worldwide, the Russian stock market has rallied in recent weeks, boosted by higher world prices for natural resources and a smooth political transition in the Kremlin.

Russian companies continue to issue new IPOs, albiet at a slower pace than last year, and RenCap's staff in the capitol will soon be moving to the new Moscow City skyscraper complex (click here for more photos of Москва Сити published last summer on Russia Blog).

Last year Renaissance Capital's Stephen Jennings offered this critique of then Prime Minister Tony Blair: "Not even rash statements by Western leaders, like Tony Blair’s swansong warning that foreign investors will turn away from Russia because of concerns over democratic principles, can dampen the enthusiasm coming from foreign and domestic investors alike.” But one year later, Jennings will be standing nearby as Tony Blair delivers a keynote speech to the same conference, hailing Russia's economic progress. This is a telling illustration of how times are changing, both in Moscow and in the West.

Vladimir F. Kuznetsov is currently providing corporate development and fund raising services for a number of Asian mineral development companies. Previously, he served as director of equity finance at the FINAM Investment Company in Moscow and published his own blog on Russian capital markets, Equity Finance in Russia. Mr. Kuznetsov is a fellow of Discovery Institute's Real Russia Project.

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