Russia's newest, most powerful corporate enterprise doesn't have a logo or a balance sheet. It doesn't hold shareholder meetings and isn't bound by any charter. Observers say it doesn't need one because it makes its own rules, and changes them as it sees fit.
It doesn't even have a name, though the brand several critics have suggested - Kremlin Inc. - is as good as any. In 2005 its CEO, Vladimir Putin, put into full swing Kremlin Inc.'s corporate strategy: reassert state influence over Russia's economy and use energy to muscle its way back onto the world's top shelf of economic powerhouses.
Under Putin's stewardship, Russia is gradually putting the Kremlin in control of everything that matters: energy, the economy, politics and the media. Last year, Russian authorities engineered takeovers and deals that gave the state partial or complete control in some of the country's most lucrative enterprises. The most significant of those deals involved the acquisition of Russian oil major Sibneft by state-owned Gazpr