July 20, 2007 (LPAC) -- Russian companies may just have to pull out of the London Stock Exchange if the current tensions continue, Alexandre Shokhin, president of Russia's Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, said in Moscow yesterday. "If events develop in this key, Britain's trading floors traditionally favored by Russian companies, including state-run companies, would start losing ground, and Continental exchanges will obtain an opportunity to attract Russian companies to their bourses," Novosti quoted Shokhin.

"Perhaps, under broadly equal conditions, some companies may fail to win tenders," Shokhin said. "There is nothing to stop the British from saying that managers of state-owned corporations are also state officials. In addition, many officials who sit on boards of directors will fail to enter the U.K. as their companies' business will require." Shokhin called on Moscow not to retaliate in kind against the UK, or the tensions could end up in a "political ping-pong, which may mean a chill in Russia-U.K. relations, if not a return to the Cold War times."