Let’s play power politics. I am Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan and ultimate arbiter of who gets the mining licences; you are a director of Kazakhmys, the former state-controlled mining company. Who holds the cards in a negotiation about how to exploit my country’s resources?

Some day, the story of how a Kazakh national mining champion evolved will be written. It will tell how in the 1990s, state assets were privatised and divvied up between enterprises that eventually became Kazakhmys and Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation. How the two companies floated on the London Stock Exchange. And how, in the end, the Kazakh government used the tools of the City to broker a merger.