Top bankers see years of state holdings in firms

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Governments around the world will remain stakeholders in companies for years to come to help the world economy come out of its deepest crisis since the Great Depression, top global bankers said on Friday.

"Government interventions are here to stay with us for a long time because all of us are restructuring the global economy and that is a long task and we are here relying on governments," Citigroup (C.N) chief executive Vikram Pandit said.

Pandit was talking at a panel discussion at the St Petersburg Economic Forum, Russia's main investment conference.

In a poll, over half the forum participants attending the panel on anti-crisis programs said governments would not unwind their crisis-time corporate stakes within three years.

Battling the crisis, Germany has taken control of Hypo Real Estate HRXG.DE, the Swiss have injected cash into UBS (UBSN.VX) (UBS.N), and the U.S. government has turned into a controlling shareholder of car giant GM (GM.N).

Russia, faced with its first recession in a decade, has been using government funds to help companies, banks and markets.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has repeatedly said any company stakes taken by the state during the crisis will not be kept, and nationalization is not a goal for a country where unwieldy and unprofitable state behemoths of the Soviet Union days are still a fresh memory.

But participants at the St Petersburg Economic Forum said the depth of problems in Russia and other countries meant government involvement was here to stay for years.

"My sense is that we are going to have a very anemic, weak recovery that there are not going to be capable, easy and quick exit strategies from government ownership stakes," Morgan Stanley (MS.N) Asia Chairman Stephen Roach said.

(Writing by Toni Vorobyova; Editing by Dan Lalor)