Streetwise Professor

From Reuters:

UC RUSAL (SEHK: 486, EuroNext: RUSAL/RUAL), the world’s largest aluminium producer, is pleased to announce details of CEO Oleg Deripaska’s lecture – ‘The Power of Focus: Turning Opportunity into Success’ – which is the inaugural speech of the UC RUSAL Presidential Forum at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).

In his lecture, Oleg Deripaska, one of Russia’s leading businessmen, will talk about his principles . . .

Deripaska is in the midst of a charm campaign, as mind boggling as that concept is.  He’s trying to sound all high minded and strategic and stuff, to make it look/sound like he’s something other than a Kremlin creature with a shady past–and a shady present.  Presumably this is to gull foreign investors to help him shovel out from his debt burden, and to give him a leg up in the war with Potanin over Norilsk Nickel.

Deripaska has to be figuring that P.T. Barnum erred substantially on the low side when he said there’s a sucker born every minute.

* Speaking of short, posting may be light in the next couple of days, and those posts may be somewhat abbreviated–esp. by SWP standards.  I am in France where I am participating in an International Energy Agency workshop on “Carbon Market Oversight.”  Yes, you read that right.  The event is in Paris Monday and Tuesday, but I came over a few days early.  Am now at Le Mont St. Michel, and will visit chateaux in the Loire Valley over the weekend.