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RUSSIAN- AMERICAN BUSINESS COOPERATION

In 2010 bilateral trade increased by 25% and reached $31.5 billion dollars (in 2009 - $23.6 billion), which is very close to pre-crisis levels. Investment cooperation is advancing. Among the most talked about business projects are the acquisition by PepsiCo of a Russian food and beverage producer Wimm-Bill-Dann for $3.8 billion dollars, as well as an agreement between Rosneft and ExxonMobil to explore the Black Sea and Arctic shelves proving for $1 billion dollars of investments into drilling. Russian Technologies State Corporation signed a contract with Boeing to purchase 50 airplanes for $3.7 billion dollars.
Plans to create Skolkovo Innovation Center provoked great interest in the U.S. Cooperation agreements were signed with such high-tech industry leaders as Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Google. Cisco Systems announced its intention to invest $1 billion dollars into the project. Boeing decided to create a large-scale research facility in Skolkovo. Siguler Guff investment fund offered to attract $250 million of private investments.
Russian companies and entrepreneurs are, in their turn, actively mastering the U.S. market. JSC Atomredmetzoloto acquired Uranium One’s uranium mines in Wyoming, internet provider Mail.ru bought instant messaging service ICQ, while Mikhail Prokhorov purchased the New Jersey Nets basketball team. Russian corporation Digital Sky Technologies accumulated 10% of shares of the social network Facebook.
The legal foundation of Russia-U.S. economic cooperation is constantly improving. Achievements include the signing of intergovernmental Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in the Area of Training of Management Personnel, as well as the Cooperation Agreement between the Federal Service of Intellectual Property, Patents and Trademarks (Rospatent) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office of the Department of Commerce. The association of small and medium business “OPORA Russia” signed a partnership memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Council on Competitiveness.
In the framework of the Presidential Commission there are approximately a dozen of working groups aimed at developing economic cooperation in various areas – energy, advancing business relations, science and technology, agriculture, healthcare, etc.
The two countries continue their interaction within the Russian-American Pacific Partnership (RAPP), which held its 16th meeting on July 13-14, 2011 in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy.