Goldman Sachs Hired By Russia To Boost Its Image

Goldman Sachs has been hired by the Russian government to burnish the nation’s image overseas and attract more institutional investors.

Bloomberg reports that the firm has signed a three-year agreement with the Economy Ministry and the Russian Direct Investment Fund to advise on issues such as communicating government decisions and setting up meetings with investors, according to Sergei Arsenyev, Goldman Sachs’s managing director of investment banking in Moscow.

'The pool of investors that Russia talks to is the dedicated emerging-markets base, and it’s been difficult for them to break out to a wider investor pool and a global base', Arsenyev, 41, who handles the bank’s Kremlin relations, said in a telephone interview. 'We think valuations in Russia remain very attractive, and there are many interesting opportunities for investors on the public and private side'.

President Vladimir Putin last year ordered the government to improve Russia’s standing in the World Bank’s Doing Business rating to 20th by 2018. It climbed eight positions to 112 in the latest study in October. While that’s better than emerging-market competitors India and Brazil, Russia remains the worst among major economies in graft, Transparency International said in December in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index.

'We don’t know how to communicate with investors', Deputy Economy Minister Sergei Belyakov told reporters last week.

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