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By John Helmer, Moscow
Alrosa has announced new strategic targets until the end of 2021, following this week’s meeting of the Supervisory Board, as Alrosa’s board of directors is known. How much of the projected growth will depend on Alrosa getting the Kremlin to persuade Vagit Alekperov of LUKoil to do what he doesn’t want to do is the big question for them all — especially for Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, who has been demonstrating sharp interest recently in the price he can arrange for an Alrosa asset sale.
An Alrosa statement says its current diamond production level of about 34 million carats per annum will be lifted to between 38 and 40 million carats, a cumulative growth rate of 6%, by increasing production at the new underground mines in Yakutia, and expanding open-pit production at mines in the Arkhangelsk region of northwest Russia. At the same time, the company’s diamond reserves are to be lifted to 1.19 billion carats, a 61% increase over their present level.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, June 21st, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow
The personal rapport between Oleg Deripaska (left) and Sergei Stepashin (right), chairman of the Accounting Chamber, has been famously uncordial. Some say Stepashin believes Deripaska plotted to cut his term as prime minister to just three months – May 12 to August 9, 1999 – and was one of those persuading the late President Boris Yeltsin to promote Vladimir Putin as prime minister instead. A lot of murky business has transpired since then. But when it comes to discharging his mandate as the state auditor, noone accuses Stepashin of letting his feelings get in the way of his duty. The converse isn’t believed of Deripaska.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, June 20th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Evraz, the Russian steelmaker listed on the London Stock Exchange main board, is being sued in the UK High Court for $35.8 million by a group of Swiss investors over a failed project to build a terminal for iron-ore and coking coal at Yuzhny port, on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast near Odessa. The dispute is over an asset on which Evraz has put a substantially higher value on its own balance-sheets than the Swiss investors are claiming in valuation and compensation in court.
The High Court claim papers were filed on April 26. At the same time, a court in Cyprus agreed to impose a freeze over money in the accounts of an Evraz subsidiary operating in Cyprus called Watney Ltd.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, June 20th, 2012
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READER CAUTION: in tough times collection methods get tougher. The following translation from the Russian, originally published on
June 14, is presented without editing. A slightly different version appeared in Izvestia on
June 13. One of Russia’s leading investigative journalists comments: “the hired criminals did exactly what they were instructed. They did not kill, but intimidated. Completed the task and disappeared. Judging by the state of the law enforcement agencies, they will not be found soon, if ever. Criminals of this kind do not carry the requisition order with them. There are different versions of who could be the customer. The question is whether there is evidence.” Basic Element, the holding owned by Oleg Deripaska, and now directed again by his longtime collaborator Gulzhan Moldazhanova, issued a release on
September 6, 2010, charging that shareholder funds had been misappropriated through false invoicing. At the time the holding
said it had filed charges with the police, and that it “will try to get back the funds, if possible” As for last week’s acts, nothing should be read into this report to suggest there is any public evidence whatsoever about the identity of the perpetrators, their employers, or the motives. The reader is cautioned against the suspicion that the shooting has had precedents involving any of those identified. For more information about the history of Sochi port’s construction problems, see
here.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, June 19th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Roman Trotsenko (centre), chief executive of the state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC), has resigned suddenly. No reason has been announced by USC, which has confirmed that Trotsenko is leaving by July 1.
First appointed by the Kremlin in 2009 to oversee the consolidation of state stakes in shipyards around the country, and inspire the shipyard managers to boost domestic new vessel orders, Trotsenko had been a millionaire developer of commercial real estate and airports, and owner of the Moscow River Shipping Company.
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by John Helmer - Monday, June 18th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow
The annual general meeting (AGM) of Rusal shareholders in Hong Kong on Friday removed Anatoly Tikhonov (image centre) from the board of directors, and replaced him with Matthias Warnig. But meeting in virtual secrecy afterwards, the new Rusal board omitted a decision on the chairmanship from its agenda. Despite a press opportunity after the shareholder meeting, the company has issued no announcement of the board change, and has yet to post the new membership of the board or other results of the shareholder votes.
According to sources in Hong Kong, the appointment of the Rusal chairmanship has been postponed. This leaves in place Barry Cheung (right), the interim chairman who was voted into the position on March 16, after Victor Vekselberg had resigned charging chief executive Oleg Deripaska (left) with mismanagement. According to a source from the Rusal meeting yesterday, “probably Cheung will resign himself during the next two or three months in order to give his place [as chairman] to Warnig.”
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by John Helmer - Saturday, June 16th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow
A group of South Africans, led by Tokyo Sexwale (image left), has devised a scheme to take over mineral assets and mining concessions in the west African republic of Guinea, which the government plans to renationalize after revoking deals struck by previous Guinean governments. The Sexwale scheme is a growing threat to Oleg Deripaska’s Rusal in Guinea, as the offers Deripaska (image right) has proposed to Guinean President Alpha Conde and his family miss their mark.
On the eve of Rusal’s annual general meeting of shareholders in Hong Kong, due on June 15, there has been no fresh warning to Rusal shareholders that their Guinean bauxite mines and alumina refinery are facing confiscation, and transfer to a state mining company controlled, indirectly, by the South Africans. These Guinean assets account for more than half of Rusal’s global bauxite reserves. On last year’s production results, the Guinea assets represent 36% of Rusal’s annual bauxite production of 13.5 million tonnes; 7% of Rusal’s alumina output of 8.2 million tonnes. Both totals were down below past-year volumes.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, June 13th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow
In the short run, possibly for three quarters of this year, BP, run by chief executive Bob Dudley, will be short of its half-billion dollar quarterly cash dividend from TNK-BP. In the long run, whether Mikhail Fridman and his partners sell their 50% stake in TNK-BP to BP or to another Russian oil company, BP is on the skids, either out of Russia entirely, or remaining on terms that will give a Russian stakeholder new power over BP’s main shareholding – potentially the single largest stake in BP.
This is definitely not the understanding you would form if you read the Anglo-American press. The spoon-fed correspondent at the Financial Times quoted “one person close to the company” (BP) as claiming that the Russians had been “wrongfooted by BP’s decision to pursue a sale.” The Telegraph reports Dudley’s tactic is to “smoke out the troublesome oligarchs who are proving impossible to work with – to make them cooperate or sell their stake to a more compliant bedfellow.” The Wall Street Journal thinks Dudley is playing the card game of Mississippi Stud, in which “players have three opportunities to raise the stakes, or fold and walk away… Upping the ante a third time might be a winning strategy in poker. But in Russia they favor a different, and much more dangerous game of chance.”
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, June 12th, 2012
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by John Helmer - Sunday, June 10th, 2012
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