By Vladimir Osakovsky, Head of Macroeconomic Analysis at UniCredit Securities
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that he “does not exclude the possibility” of running for a second term in 2012, Vedomosti writes.
Our view: Medvedev made the statement yesterday in a press conference at Stanford University during his visit to the US. The newspaper commented that this is the clearest sign so far that the president could sit for a second term.
We note that over the past several weeks Medvedev has indeed stepped up efforts to outline his strategic vision for Russia, making several statements about the need for deeper modernization of the Russian economy, improvements in the investment climate, and the necessity of entrepreneurship. Generalizing somewhat, we believe such efforts could be seen as a move to create a reformist base of an electoral platform for a second term that could look very different from his first.
However, we note that yesterday’s statement is nearly a carbon copy of one made by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in September 2009, when he also said that he “did not exclude such a possibility for himself”, adding that if he or Medvedev decided to run for the office in 2012, there would be no competition between them, as they would agree on their “candidate.”
Therefore we do not see yesterday’s statement as implying that a decision has been made on who will run for president in 2012. This should prevent any market reaction to the news, we believe.
Conclusion: We expect a neutral market reaction to the news.
