When Barack Obama, US president, announced his decision to shepherd General Motors into bankruptcy on Monday, Vladimir Putin, Russian prime minister, was conducting some car industry business of his own.

Mr Putin met in Moscow with Siegfried Wolf, co-chief executive of Canada’s Magna International, and German Gref, head of Sberbank, whose groups are due to take a controlling interest in GM’s spun-off European Opel division in a deal to be negotiated in the coming weeks.