By all accounts the City of Moscow is in good shape.
It's one of the few net contributors to the federal budget, has the lion's share of revenue from both banks and corporates, and its debt ratings are constrained by the sovereign ceiling of BB-/Ba2.
But its reasons for issuing a $500 million Eurobond are quite transparent.
As the city prepares to celebrate its 850th anniversary this autumn, Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, has gone on a spending spree. Roads are being resurfaced, lighting improved, and Red Square and its environs are being fully revamped - they're even putting new green marble slabs on the walls of the subway in front of the Kremlin.
But the recent arrival of a statue of Peter the Great has got up the Muscovites' noses. Crafted by Georgian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli and bought for the city on Luzhkov's orders for several million dollars, it depicts the late 17th, early 18th century tsar on the deck of a ship. Over 100 metres tall and placed on the banks of the Moskva river, it is intended to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Russian fleet.
But no-one seems to have told the mayor that Russia's most infamous monarch abandoned Moscow to found a new capital on the Baltic - St Petersburg.
Across the water, Finnish banker Ilkka Salonen, vice-chairman of the International Moscow Bank, has a perfect view of the memorial. He is not overly impressed: "I've only met one person who likes it, and he wasn't even Russian. And rumour has it that Tsereteli initially designed it as a memorial to Christopher Columbus, couldn't sell it, and so took it back to his workshop, changed the head, and sold it on to Moscow."
But the city authorities have obviously realized that they're not made of money. They have rejected a call from opponents of the monument to hold a referendum to decide whether it should stay or go - to move it would cost them $12 million. Antony Currie