The bad news that largely triggered the fall came from LUKoil President Vagit Alekperov, when he announced that the company was preparing for possible back tax claims.
"These repercussions were so great because no one expected anything like that from Lukoil," says Maksim Shein, chief analyst with Brokerkreditservis, a Russian brokerage. "This does not correspond to the positive statements coming from the national leadership about further interaction between businesses and the tax bodies."
He says recent news from LUKoil and TNK-BP, another company subjected to new back tax bills lately, has certainly not helped Russia's investment climate. However, he does not believe that share prices will tumble and foreign capital will flee from the Russian market because overseas investors had not been very active even before the news, so there is little to lose.
Some analysts even argue that the new tax bills imposed on large companies have not in the least affected the national market. According to Artur Shtrevensky, a securities analyst with Aton Capital, market players have long classified all possible scenarios of tax disputes in three options: the first is a Yukos tax-and-dismember trial, the second a VimpelCom tax-and-reduce option and the third a Sibneft tax-and-forget scenario. The market is slowly but surely coming round to believe that Yukos was an isolated case, and is largely anticipating one of the two latter options.
