101.  Potanin, for his part, insisted that MFK Renaissance would help attract investment to ailing Russian companies and facilitate their restructuring.

102.  Privately, Russian companies said they would not agree to deeper cuts.

103.  Privatized Russian companies, used to decades of secrecy under communism and to running things their own way, have proved hostile to outsiders.

104.  Professor Shleifer, meanwhile, was accused of making the oil-stock purchases with Hay, as well as investing money with his wife in Russian companies.

105.  PricewaterhouseCoopers in Russia had been under intense criticism for its audits of other Russian companies.

106.  Russian companies are essentially selling for pennies on the dollar.

107.  Russian companies are in a shocking state of disrepair, needing either billions of dollars in reconstruction or outright demolition.

108.  Russian companies are not yet able to compete head-on with the multinational oil giants.

109.  Russian companies, however, are notoriously unreliable in repaying debts, and the law notoriously unreliable in compelling them to do so.

110.  Russian company owners had learned how to secure international financing on their own and sell to foreign buyers through their own trading companies.