Lai See | Barry Cheung makes waves in Moscow

We see that Barry Cheung's difficulties with the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange have made waves in Moscow. This is because he is an independent non-executive director on the board of Rusal, the world's largest aluminium company, which, although Russian, is listed in Hong Kong.

But it's also because Viktor Vekselberg and Len Blavatnick, the principals of Sual Partners, which owns 15.8 per cent of Rusal, have issued a statement calling on Rusal to demand an explanation from Cheung, according to the Russian language newspaper . This probably has little to do with corporate governance issues but is more likely an attempt by Sual to embarrass Oleg Deripaska.

It will be recalled that Vekselberg resigned the chairmanship of Rusal under acrimonious circumstances in March last year, criticising Deripaska for the company's poor performance. The paper quotes a Rusal shareholder as saying: "While there are legal proceedings, it is too early to come to any conclusions." Sage advice.

Austria is under pressure to agree to EU efforts to clamp down on tax evasion. On Wednesday it dropped objections to sharing data on foreign depositors. It had been reluctant to share the names of foreign holders of accounts, many of which were set up as a way of evading tax in their own countries.