Moscow lower as Yukos trial starts
Russian stocks were lower on worries about the financial health of oil major Yukos, whose main shareholder Mikhail
Khodorkovsky went on trial earlier in the day for fraud and tax evasion.
Traders said only a compromise between officials and the oil giant could overturn bearish sentiment. Otherwise
investors could abandon the market just months after an influx of money looked set to start a sustained rally in Russian
equity markets.
Yukos shares closed 3.9 per cent down at $6.20 on the RTS bourse after plunging by as much as 12 per cent during the
session.
They are at their lowest level since early 2002 and have shed almost two-thirds of their value from the peaks in
April this year. The benchmark RTS1 index closed 1.7 per cent down at 533.26 on volume of $18.1m.
Kuwaiti shares ended the trading week at a new high as investors moved funds back to the Arab world's second
biggest bourse after the end of subscriptions in two IPOs that had sucked liquidity away.
The Kuwait Stock Exchange index closed 0.5 per cent higher yesterday at a best ever 5,459.90, up sharply from last
Wednesday's finish at 5,343.
Among individual movers, however, blue chip Mobile Telecom lost 2.4 per cent at KD3.320 after the telecom giant said
its bid for Oman's second mobile phone license was unsuccessful.
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