In his first official visit to Russia, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron called on the Kremlin to stand by the rule of law, thereby helping businesses and shareholders gain the confidence they need to inject capital into the Russian economy.
“[Investors] need to know that they can go to a court confident that a contract will be enforced objectively and that their assets and premises won’t be unlawfully taken away from them,” Cameron said, as reported by Forbes.
Economists have cited lawlessness as the main the reason U.K. investment in Russia has dropped in recent years. British M&A in Russia “slumped to $346 million last year, compared with $428 million for German companies and down from a peak of $2.1 billion in 2007,” according to Bloomberg.
A host of business leaders accompanied Cameron on the trip, including BP’s Bob Dudley, who, as you may recall, was expelled from the country three years ago after claiming he had been harassed by the Russian government and whose Russian offices were raided by federal authorities just hours after rival ExxonMobil announced a major agreement with Rosneft.
