Jupiter's Shaftan: Is there a silver lining for Russia?

Elena Shaftan, manager of the Jupiter Emerging European Opportunities fund, reports on her findings from a recent research trip to Russia.

This latest trip highlighted a big gap between the perception of Russia and the reality; not for better or worse, but in that the opportunities and problems we saw were not what one might expect them to be. The first thing I noticed was the dearth of investors. Why? There is simply no interest. The world seems to have given up on Russia. It was symbolic that the opulent Ritz hotel, which in previous years was heaving with European investors, is now entirely occupied by Chinese tourists. While this absence of investors was a rather sorrowful sight, it begged a question: is there a silv...