According to the Associated Press, just last month Ukraine's Premier, Yulia Tymoshenko, counseled Russian metals and oil billionaire Viktor Vekselberg not to buy Pinchuk's shares in the Nikopol factory--which now sounds like a canny tip-off.
There's plenty stirring in Eastern Europe's steel markets: Yesterday a Ukrainian court seized control of billionaire Viktor Pinchuk's Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant and froze any shareholder activity, at the behest of that country's president, Viktor Yushchenko, (see "Ukrainian Billionaire Stripped Of Another Asset").