Battling vested interests to get utilities to perform

To a large extent the natural monopolies are the Russian economy. At the start of this year no-one believed that president Vladimir Putin had either the political will or the power to tackle Russia’s most deeply entrenched vested interests. But investors were shocked when at the end of May the president booted out what one fund manager calls “Russia’s most encrusted interest”, Rem Vyakhirev, the chief executive of gas monopoly Gazprom, and replaced him with a loyal lackey.