International

Vitalij Farafonov is a member of the Corporate Finance Faculty and a manager in corporate finance advisory at Deloitte & Touche CIS in Moscow He worked with Deloitte in the UK for over 6 years before moving to Deloitte Moscow in July 2007. As a senior member of Deloitte’s Moscow corporate finance advisory team, he advises both Russian and overseas clients on cross-border M&A transactions.  Contact vifarafonov@deloitte.ru

Read Vitalij's short and insightful guide to approaching acquisitions in Russia with tips on understanding and mitigating risks when doing business there.

It is important for an investor to have an objective understanding of the risks of investing in a BRIC and a plan to mitigate as many of these risks as possible. This is especially true for those investing in Russia, which is perceived by many as a more risky place to do business than China, India or Brazil. This perception is based on a mixture of inherent, country-specific risks and, often, a lack of understanding of the local culture and business environment by the investor. Once a target company is identified and a transaction process begins, the investors are faced with additional risks, including company-specific issues and the complexity of integrating the new acquisition into the existing business. 

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This month's 'Letter From' comes from Denis Rayel in Sydney. Having spent 12 years in corporate finance in the UK, he now heads up the Leveraged and Acquisition Finance team in Australia for the bank he had worked with in London.

'In July 2007, I moved my family from London to Sydney, attracted both by the opportunity to work for a start-up operation (my company was opening an Australian subsidiary) and a ‘fuzzy’ vision of a better lifestyle, though I had no really fixed ideas of what this might consist of.'

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