To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform which (a) individuals and (b) organisations Ministers met during the visit to Moscow between Monday 27 October and Wednesday 29 October 2008. (242146)

My noble Friend the Secretary of State for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform met the following individuals and organisations during his visit to Moscow between 27 October and Wednesday 29 October.

Sergei Lavrov, Minister for Foreign Affairs

Igor Shuvalov, First Deputy PM

Alexsey Kudrin, Deputy PM and Finance Minister

Arkadiy Dvorkovitch, Assistant of the President

Anatoliy Chubais, CEO, RosNanoTech

German Gref, CEO, Sberbank

Aleksey Mordashov, General Director, Severstal

Evgeniy Yasin, Rector, Higher School of Economics

He also attended a number of events where he met multiple business representatives and organisations across a range of areas. These included British business investors in the Russian market, Russian and British representatives from the financial services industry; economic and political analysts, Russian SMEs, energy companies, academics and others.

To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform who the members were of the business delegation supported by his Department that visited Moscow between 27 October and 29 October 2008. (242147)

Members of the accompanying business delegation were:

Richard Lambert, DG, CBI;

Tim Eggar, Chair and President of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce (RBCC);

Alex Robinson, Executive Director, Aviva;

Richard Spies, President, BP Russia;

Robert Webb, General Counsel, BA;

Scott Halliday, UK Managing Partner, Ernst and Young;

Tim Burnhope, Deputy MD, JCB Sales;

Tracey Pierce, Head of Equity Primary Markets, LSE;

Simon Chivers, Country Manager, Mace Group;

Peter Hambro, Hambro Mining;

Maurice Topiol, Chairman, Rothschild Russia, NM Rothschild and Sons;

Sir Philip Thomas, Senior Advisor, Shell;

Reas Kondraschow, Group Development Director, Whitbread.