Russia in many ways was initially cushioned by the price of oil for the past six to seven months.... It saw itself as insulated and removed from what was going on in the world for the past 18 months. In our business, which is highly correlated with financing and highly dependent on development financing, we saw the first signs of the changes in the market at the end of [2007], when we realized that development financing would no longer be available. It was really only recently that things have started to creep up on Russia. Russia is right now still in a bit of a denial phase, going through the process of trying to understand what this really means for it.
The Russian government is also going through an understanding that this is going to be more protracted and more serious than initially perceived, [that] it has much more far-reaching impact in terms of the economy and in terms of the real liquidity in the economy. We are seeing a lot of signals today. Lending is completely frozen.
