Russian mogul plans City float

RUSSIAN billionaire David Iakobachvili is planning a London flotation of his private company Phoenix, which makes hoods to protect children against fire and poisonous fumes.

Iakobachvili has a reputation for openness and honesty and sees a London listing as an ideal way to escape being too closely associated with the more unsavoury background of some Russian businesses.

The 46-year-old - a friend of Prince Michael of Kent - employed Russia's top military scientists to develop the fire hood, which can be packaged into a wallet.

The £25 hood will be bought and given away by the Moscow local authority to millions of schoolchildren in the city.

Iakobachvili, a former Georgian who was a labourer on the Moscow Underground in his youth, is now regarded as one of Russia's most progressive new 'capitalists'. Besides the fire hoods, his private company has interests ranging from garages to farming.

His main company, Wimm-Bill-Dann - named after the tennis tournament - is one of a handful of Russian companies quoted on the New York Stock Exchange.

It has 18,000 workers and is worth about £1.6bn. It has a staggering 40% share of the Russian fruit juice and yogurt market.

The company was named Wimm-Bill-Dann in the early Nineties because it was decided to use a name that sounded Western.

Iakobachvili told the Financial Mail on Sunday: 'I went to see the tennis at Wimbledon this year for the first time. I was invited over by Prince Michael of Kent.'

Prince Michael, whose resemblance to Czar Nicholas II -murdered by the Communists - makes him a very popular figure in post-Communist Russia, has visited Wimm-Bill-Dann plants in Russia.

And one possible deal that could add to Iakobachvili's fortune would see Danone, the French food maker that already has a 7% stake in Wimm-Bill-Dann take a controlling interest in the fruit juice company and gain access to the massive Russian market that comes with it.