Dmytro Firtash, the Ukrainian trader who has emerged as a key player in the European natural gas market, was unfamiliar to most western business people until this week. But a small group of British businessmen have known him well for years. When he appeared last year at a Mansion House dinner at which the Queen presented an award to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, the 40 year old Mr Firtash sat at a table hosted not by Ukrainians, but by JKX Oil and Gas, a British AIM-quoted company with interests in Ukraine. Its chairman is Lord Peter Fraser, a former Tory trade minister, and the chief executive is Paul Davies, an oil man with extensive experience in the former Soviet Union. Mr Firtash is one of the company's biggest shareholders, controlling a 9.7 per cent stake through a holding company called Benam.
When he appeared last year at a Mansion House dinner at which the Queen presented an award to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, the 40 year old Mr Firtash sat at a table hosted not by Ukrainians, but by JKX Oil and Gas, a British AIM-quoted company with interests in Ukraine.
Its chairman is Lord Peter Fraser, a former Tory trade minister, and the chief executive is Paul Davies, an oil man with extensive experience in the former Soviet Union. Mr Firtash is one of the company's biggest shareholders, controlling a 9.7 per cent stake through a holding company called Benam.
I'd bet that Firtash got a stake in as a price to get better access/licenses/sale conditions. I have not followed the situation closely enough to comment on the details of what actually happened or when. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Peter Fraser, Baron Fraser of Carmyllie - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
From 1992 to 1995 he was Minister of State at the Scottish Office covering Home Affairs and Health. He was then Minister of State at the Department of Trade and Industry with a responsibility for export promotion and overseas investment with particular emphasis on the oil and gas industry. In 1996 he became Minister for Energy.
Before that he was Lord Advocate of Scotland, ie the attorney general responsible for investigating the Lockerbie bombing, which he evidently "mishandled" (depending on your point of view - some would have said the only thing that mattered was to convict a Libyan).
The Lockerbie link is worth a click (warning, this concerns what goes on in Malta, etc...)
He also chaired the relatively few disciplinary appeals we had. There was a ferocious ex-judge who chaired the disciplinary tribunals....
A thoroughly nice and clubbable man, and with the ability to grasp complex briefs which QC's have to have. But I don't think his grasp of trading/commercial issues was any better than mine (which is not great, compared to the HiDs of this world).
He's very much rooted in the Establishment of course. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
