Renault Pays at Least $1 Billion for AvtoVAZ Stake

Renault SA, France's second-largest carmaker, will pay at least $1 billion for 25 percent of Russia's OAO AvtoVAZ to widen its access to a market where sales of foreign brands jumped 61 percent last year.

Renault will pay $1 billion now and as much $166 million more in the second half of 2010, depending on AvtoVAZ's performance through next year, Sergei Chemezov, general director of Russian Technologies Corp., the state-run holding company that controls AvtoVAZ, told reporters today in Moscow.