Country: Russia

Ashish Swarup is a Portfolio Manager and Investment Analyst at Aikya Investment Management.

Join Andrew Brown from East 72 as he outlines his 14 bold predictions for 2023.

Coming off euphoric highs of the year before, the crypto market has endured an environment of tightening monetary policy, which led to sell-offs, implosions of projects like Terra, bankruptcy filings of CeFi companies including Celsius Network and Voyager Digital and the climactic downfall of the FTX exchange.

Out of 14 predictions for the year ahead, Bryce, Alec and Andrew review each one and discuss the circumstances around those topics for 2023.

Today Alec and Sascha ask: what do I need to know about OPEC Plus and their recent decision to cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day?

McDonalds, Starbucks, Ikea. Or should we say... Uncle Vanya, Stars Coffee, IDEA? After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, many big western brands shut their operations in Russia and left the world’s eleventh largest economy. But these businesses were incredibly popular with the Russian people. Many of them were potent symbols of post-Cold War Russia, and became a part of the Russian people’s lifestyle and culture. Their abrupt closures left a gaping hole. But now the void is being filled by Russian entrepreneurs. The amount of knock-off brands has shot up since the war began. And these aren’t unlicensed knock offs you might see when you're travelling overseas. These are government sanctioned knock offs. These are going to be big Russian businesses, copycats of their western counterparts. Today Darcy and Sascha ask - what's happening with these Russian knockoffs, and is anyone trying to stop them?

On the 24 February, Russia invaded Ukraine. In the aftermath, the condemnation from world leaders across the globe was swift and saw the arrival of unprecedented sanctions. Germany was one of the vocal voices speaking out - their Chancellor Olaf Schlolz called Putin’s actions “a blatant breach of international law”. They've also participated in the seizure of Russian citizen's assets - restricting the superyacht 'Dilbar' owned by a Russian billionaire from leaving its anchorage in Hamburg early in March. So then why has it been so difficult for Germany to wean itself off Russian gas? Today Bryce and Sascha examine this question.

Bill Browder is the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management, which at one time was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia, and in 1997 was the best performing fund in the world - up 238%! Bill was the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act, a law to punish Russian human rights violators, which was signed into law by President Obama in 2012 and subsequently adopted by a number of governments around the world including Canada in 2017 and the UK in 2018. He is the author of the best-selling book Red Notice: How I became Putin’s Number 1 Enemy. Given the current World events in the Ukraine, we felt it appropriate to re-share this episode recorded last May (2021).

How are the boys tracking in the ASX game and have you got involved? Why is consumer confidence down if no one can remember the news, and how has the commodity crisis gone everywhere? All this and more on this week's Comedian v Economist. If you feel inspired to donate to the org Thomas is volunteering with right now, go to: https://www.resilientbyron.org/donate . Thanks!

With geopolitical events causing uncertainty and unrest, it can feel uncomfortable to ask about what is happening with your share portfolio. However, given the globalised nature of how economies interact, it is important to inform ourselves on the situation from different perspectives. Today, Maddy and Sophie chat through how both governments and corporations are responding to the Russian- Ukraine conflict and what impact this has on the stock market.

This is the first of our 'What Crypto Did' episodes, where we talk about the latest news stories that have been filling your feeds over the past few weeks. We kick off with the biggest story that has been dominating the news lately, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Cryptocurrency has been catapulted into the spotlight as a result of the invasion, with the humanitarian aid fund Relief receiving over $50 million worth of donations in cryptocurrency. Then Tracey brings the bizarre story of the alleged Bitfinex hackers, an unknown writer and rapper Heather Morgan (AKA Razzle Khan) and her husband Elya Lichtenstein. We go over the crypto ads that aired during the superbowl and Tracey discusses Twitter's integration of Ethereum for tipping fellow users on the platform.