Kremlin retains influence on business One surprising feature of the long-running scrap between the oligarchs Vladimir Potanin and Oleg Deripaska for control of Russia's Norilsk Nickel is that the Kremlin let it fester for so long. Finally, it seems to have stepped in to sort it out. Last Friday, Mr Potanin was shown on television meeting President Vladimir Putin. Within days, reports emerged in Russian media - broadly confirmed by people in the know - that after talks initiated some weeks ago by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a peace deal was in the offing at the world's largest producer of nickel and palladium by volume. One scenario would include Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich, as a "friendly" third party, taking a stake that would reduce the ownership influence of Mr Potanin's group, though the latter would become Norilsk chief executive. Norilsk would also pay out higher dividends, which Mr Deripaska has long demanded. Such a solution would be in some ways positive. With Mr Putin back as president for a third term, the Kremlin seems to be seeking to resolve some longstanding shareholder disputes that have cast a pall over Russia's investment climate. First came TNK-BP, whose 50-50 structure between Russian and British shareholders had irked the president seemingly from the moment he blessed the deal in 2003. The particular way this was resolved, however, through state-controlled Rosneft's takeover of oil industry assets that were already well run - despite the shareholder dispute - is arguably negative for Russia's economy. Yet Norilsk, as a privately owned national champion, is a slightly different case. As Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Sberbank-CIB, notes, the debilitating, four-year power struggle has left the company "in a rut." Resolving it could help Norilsk move forward, receive new state licences for developing deposits and start fulfilling its potential as a Russian BHP Billiton. Raising Norilsk's dividend payout could also reinforce the government's attempts to do the same at state-controlled companies, not least Rosneft. That, in turn, could help close the gap in dividend payout rates between Russia and other emerging markets and give a boost to its flagging stock market. But should the Norilsk case be resolved in this way, it would send negative messages, too. It shows that the Kremlin remains the only effective arbiter in such tycoon stand-offs. So much in Russian business is still decided by informal agreements, under pressure from the top. Without a properly independent court or arbitration system inside Russia, there are few other ways of settling disputes - apart from contracting out the job to an external venue such as London's High Court, which oligarchs have increasingly been doing. But Mr Putin has signalled he prefers disputes to be settled in Russia. Mr Abramovich's potential role also highlights how the system frequently relies on Kremlin-friendly intermediaries. Another player here is Alisher Usmanov, whose Metalloinvest metals group owns 4 per cent of Norilsk - and whose Megafon mobile phone company completed a $1.7bn listing in London and Moscow this week. Mr Usmanov twice acted as peacemaker in bitterly fought corporate disputes around Megafon that had played out across European courtrooms. First he bought out investment funds with alleged ties to top Russian politicians, which had fought with another Megafon shareholder, a unit of Mikhail Fridman's Alfa Group. Then, after himself clashing with Alfa and a third shareholder, Sweden's TeliaSonera, Mr Usmanov acquired Alfa's 25 per cent stake in April this year. His prize was a controlling stake in a now London-listed business. People close to Mr Usmanov have denied his role in Megafon was a favour to the Kremlin. But many analysts believe otherwise and suggest that, a dozen years after Mr Putin vowed to "liquidate the oligarchs as a class," the intertwining of Russian business and politics remains as strong as ever, albeit in a reordered form. Yevgeny Minchenko, a political scientist, suggested in a recent report Russia was today run by an informal group of senior officials, security men and business people. He called this, using Soviet-era imagery, "politburo 2.0." One member was Igor Sechin, Rosneft's chief executive. Among politburo "candidate members" were Mr Abramovich and Mr Usmanov - plus Messrs Potanin, Deripaska and Fridman. Mr Putin was "arbiter and moderator." All this can make Russia a bewildering environment for foreign companies to navigate. But it also raises questions about the stability of a business system where so much depends on the say-so of one man - especially one whose grip on power in the past few months has seemed a little weaker than it once was. Neil Buckley is the FT's Eastern Europe editor