By John Helmer in Moscow

Sergei Vybornov, chief executive of Alrosa, has been omitted from the new board of directors, known as the Supervisory Board, according to a company announcement posted after the annual general shareholders meeting on June 20: http://www.alrosa.ru/press/releases/detail.php?ID=4338

Other changes in board membership have also been disclosed in the new board listing; these suggest the impact of the financial crisis on Alrosa’s operations, and of problems reportedly uncovered by the Accounting Chamber, the independent Russian state auditor. A member of the Chamber audit team said the check of Alrosa took place at the beginning of this year, and the results were reviewed by the Chamber Collegium in April. She said the results were reported to the government iun a report stamped confidential.

The new 15-member board has 5 representatives of the Sakha republic, including the Sakha President Vyacheslav Shtirov; the 2007-2008 board had 6 Sakha representatives, so the Sakha representation has been reduced in line with the 32% shareholding in Alrosa held by the regional government.

The Alrosa management had two seats on the old board — the Chief Executive Officer Sergei Vybornov and the Vice President, Ivan Demyanov. Vybornov has been omitted from the new listing, and Demyanov remains. No CEO of Alrosa has been excluded from the board before. Last week, Vybornov told an industry outlet: “Alrosa has only one shareholder — the state — who could fire me, and it has said it does not plan to do so.” Vybornov’s spokesman was contacted for comment, but his telephone was not answering.
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by John Helmer - Monday, June 22nd, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

A briefing by Russian coking coal producer Raspadskaya this week suggests pessimism that sales to the domestic steelmills will recover beyond their current monthly level. For brokers and speculators, the fortunes of the publicly listed mining company (ticker RASP:RU) now depend on betting that China will continuing substituting costly home-grown coal supplies with cheaper Russian imports, and that Russian miners like Raspadskaya can continue beating the Australians and South Africans on price.

Deputy General Director Alexander Andreyev said on June 17 that Raspadskaya is currently operating at a 75% capacity utilization rate, compared to pre-crisis September 2008. At that time, the company produced 734,000 tonnes of coking coal concentrate, so the implied June 2009 output should be about 550,000t. The last officially reported production figure from Raspadskaya was for March at 529,000t.

Andreyev also said that the current price for his concentrate is $53 per tonne.

According to a report on Raspadskaya today by Michael Kavanagh, steel analyst at Uralsib Bank, coking coal output in April and May was also at the 550,000t level, so “production appears to have reached a plateau.” He also notes that earlier targets announced by the company have not been met. “Raspadskaya’s management had previously stated that 2Q09 production was expected to be 2.5 mln tons of coal (1.87 mln tons of concentrate), and that production capacity utilization should reach 80%. It now looks as though 2Q09 production will be just 2.2 mln tons of coal (1.65 mln tons of concentrate), which is 12% below the previous target. ”
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by John Helmer - Thursday, June 18th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Severstal announced Monday that the Russian state savings bank Sberbank has granted it a three-year $300 million credit line. Quoting the chief financial officer, Sergei Kuznetsov, the steelmaker said: “These credit facilities will allow the Company to further strengthen its liquidity and extend maturity profile. Sberbank facility is a reliable long-term source of capital which will be used to finance ongoing needs and replace some of our maturing obligations.” There was no disclosure of the interest rate, the security pledged, or the loan covenants imposed by Sberbank.

Severstal’s financial reports to date indicate that atotal of about $1.9 billion in debt matures this year, and must either be repaid or refinanced. In February already, the group repaid $325 million in Eurobond obligations; and must repay another $480 million by year’s end. In 2010 Severstal will have another $900 million in debt repayments. Then between 2010 and 2013, about $4 billion in debt will reportedly fall due.

Although Severstal, the third-ranked Russian steelmaker, has indicated confidence it has enough cash on hand, and current cashflow, to handle this year’s repayments, the Eurobond loan agreements which Severstal signed are putting pressure on Mordashov to remove losses from his current balance-sheet by selling loss-making North American steelmills. At the same time, the loan covenants imposed by loans outstanding and Eurobonds sharply curtail the company’s refinancing and restructuring options.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
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by John Helmer in Moscow

The attempt last week by Russia’s consumer protection agency to halt all imports of Belarus dairy products on technical labeling grounds has been called off, after an agreement was reached between Moscow and Minsk to impose a quota on imports of dry milk shipments, and increase the tonnage of imported Belarussian cheese, yoghurt and other dairy products.

Industry sources in Belarus and Moscow believe that two of Russia’s largest dairy companies, Wimm Bill Dann (WBD) and Unimilk, sought to improve the pricing and profitability of their dry-milk business by blocking the low-price Belarus imports. WBD is owned by David Yakobashvili; Unimilk by managers, who acquired their stakes from Roman Abramovich.

Last week, Russian politicians, including President Dmitry Medvedev, issued personal attacks on Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko, who responded in kind. The import ban was an orchestrated political campaign against him personally, Lukashenko charged. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin then said at yesterday’s cabinet meeting that Russian officials “need to be accurate in their statements. To offend someone is not the best option. We and Belarus, whatever happens, are part of one family.”

After Putin and other officials claimed that Belarus dry-milk imports would be lowered from 110,000 tonnes to 70,000 tonnes annually, the Russian Minister of Agriculture Elena Skrynnik revealed yesterday that dry-milk imports from Minsk will be halted for six months, while the volume of other dairy imports will be permitted to increase from 110,000 tonnes to 132,000 tonnes.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

A bid to revive the Russian mine prospects of Toronto-listed Archangel Diamond Corporation (ADC), and head off liquidation by De Beers, failed over the weekend with the disclosure that a US and UK hedge fund operated by Elliott Management Corporation and Elliott Advisors was withdrawing its offer to buy a controlling share in ADC and clear its debts to De Beers.

An announcement by ADC, issued to the market on June 15, says: “Archangel Diamond Corporation… announces that it has received notice from the investor group under the non-binding private placement term sheet announced June 4, 2009 that the investor has determined not to proceed on the terms contemplated in that term sheet and has, therefore, terminated it.”

Despite the fact that negotiations between the investor group, De Beers and ADC have been under way for some time, ADC has not publicly identified Elliott as the bidder. This is Elliott Management Corporation, which is headquartered in New York, and was founded by a lawyer, Paul Singer, in the 1970s. The hedge fund has been reported to be managing almost $13 billion in investor funds, but the company website provides no information. A subsidiary, Elliott Advisors, based in London, has also been involved in the De Beers buyout bid.

No reason has apparently been given by Elliott for withdrawing its interest in ADC, which did not publicly confirm the offer until June 4, three days after Polished Prices.com reported it.
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by John Helmer - Monday, June 15th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

A client alert was issued Thursday by Deutsche Bank analyst Olga Okunova, warning that even if the Mechel Group succeeds in refinancing a $1.5 billion loan, which has been overdue since March, the group faces serious cash shortage and debt service problems this year and next.

Mechel has made new information available to shareholders and banks, though not in a public news release, ahead of the scheduled annual general meeting (AGM) of shareholders on June 30. This identifies problems with creditors, who have loaned Mechel $2 billion for the purchase of fareastern coal mining assets, including Yakutugol, which the group controlled by Igor Zyuzin won at a state auction in October 5, 2007.

Mechel won the large but relatively undeveloped assets with a bid ofRb58.196 billion (then $2.3 billion), defeating Arcelor Mittal and Alrosa. Zyuzin then raised $2 billion in new loans to finance the acquisition. The money was provided in the form of a 5-year loan for $1.7 billion, secured for repayment by coal exports; and a smaller 3-year loan of $300 million, apparently secured by shares. The original lenders were ABN AMRO, BNP Paribas, Calyon, Natixis, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation Europe Limited, Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking, and Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft. Sumitomo had already been identified as a financial backer for Mechel to expand its coal output, and exports to Japan, from the Yakut coalfields. The assets included the issued share capital of Yakutugol (75% of the statutory issued share capital minus one share), Elgaugol (68.86% of the statutory issued share capital), and the real estate complex of a railway and a road from the Zeysk Railway Station (Far Eastern Railway) in Zeysk to the Elga coal deposits.

It appears from the latest Deutsche Bank report that the five-year term of the loan, requiring repayment in 2012, was foreclosed by the banks, because of loan covenant breaches by Mechel that have not been disclosed before.
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by Editor - Friday, June 12th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Russia’sconsumer protection service has issued a ban on imports of milk and dairy products from Belarus. Although the reason given publicly appears to apply to imports from the Ukraine, Lithuania, and Latvia, their milk trade has so far not been interrupted. This has encouraged speculation that the Kremlin is using the milk bottle to strike at Belarus President, Alexander Lukashenko.

TheRussian dairy product import market is worth about $6 billion per year, Moscow agriprod experts say; Belarus holds the largest share of about one-third, while Finland, New Zealand, Germany, and other European sources account for the remainder. Virtually all of Belarus’s milk exports go to Russia, so the sudden cutoff, which started Saturday and widened on Tuesday, is financially costly to the government in Minsk.

The head of Rospoterbnadzor (RPN), Gennady Onishchenko, claims the problem is that Belarus has failed to update the product information required by six-month old Russian package disclosure regulations. But his spokesman refuses to explain why non-compliance by other Baltic state exporters has not been hit with bans. A publication by RPN on May 29, reporting on package check for domestic dairy products, as well as imports, found that five Russian regions had no packaging that met the new rules, while 13 regions were reporting less than 50% compliance. Even in Moscow, the RPN report suggests, one product package in five being sold lacked the right information labels.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
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By John Helmer

At a hearing on June 9, the Australian Federal Court issued filing deadlines, and ordered a hearing date in August for adjudication of the clash between manganese miners, OM Holdings (OMH) of Singapore and Stratford Sun Ltd, a unit of Consolidated Minerals. It is the first skirmish over the tactics OMH has been employing to preserve current shareholder control in what is increasingly viewed as a test of strength in the global manganese market that supplies China’s steelmills.

China rules the world of steel — biggest producer, biggest consumer, and until this year, biggest exporter. Manganese is vital to steel production, because it is an alloy that hardens the metal for most industrial applications. So China also rules the world of manganese, which is concentrated in Australia and two southern African countries; and also the price of manganese; and thus, the share price of the manganese mining companies.

But if a China-linked, publicly listed manganese company — one of the only pure manganese miners in the world — wants to block buyers of its shares in the marketplace from buying, and shareholders from holding the management to account, can anyone lift the bamboo curtain, and oblige the company to follow the market governance rules? For the first time, that’s a question for the Australian Federal Court to decide.

More importantly, the action, which commenced hearing this week in the Perth division of the court, is a curtain-raiser on an even larger play — this one is about how the world of manganese is being prepared for a redistribution of shareholding ownership and control, in which big actors, like BHP Billiton, Australia’s most powerful enterprise, are contemplating their exit, while challengers from all over the mining world calculate their opportunity to move in. Because the price of manganese is so volatile, the potential in a new carve-up of global manganese is high risk, but also high profit. But for the dominant Chinese steelmakers, volatility and unpredictability for inputs like manganese should be curbed, if possible. So, will the Chinese act directly to buy up manganese miners now, while they are relatively cheap? Or will they act indirectly, having regard for the way the direct approach to buying resource companies can trigger popular backlash and political resistance in countries like Australia, South Africa, the US, or Russia?
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
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Alrosa has issued the following statement, dated June 8, through a Russian internet publication, www.rough-polished.com:

“ALROSA intends to bring a case before the Court of the United Kingdom claiming damage to the company’s commercial interests due to the publications by John Helmer posted on the PolishedPrices website. The Russian diamond mining company has already engaged the Mezhregion Bar Association to prepare this lawsuit.

As ALROSA informed rough-polished.com, the company “believes that publishing materials on would-be changes in its management with reference to some unnamed sources is directly damaging the company’s commercial interests while ALROSA is concluding long-term contracts.”

“Indeed, the company’s important customers had anything but simple experience interacting with ALROSA, when the rules and principles of mutual relationship were not transparent providing enough grounds for all kind of rumours,” ALROSA stressed.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

A new ratings report by Fitch has declared Alrosa, the state-owned Russian diamond miner, to be twice as profitable — as measured by Ebitda margin — than global leader, De Beers.

Alrosa doesn’t issue production figures for its mines by carat, but claims a 25% share of global diamond mine output by value. Diamond sales in 2008 have been reported at $2.8 billion. Anglo American, a part-owner of De Beers, reports that the latter produced last year about 48 million carats, and holds a 40% global mine market share. De Beers’s sales in 2008 were $6.9 billion.

According to the report issued by Fitch on May 21, Alrosa’s advantages include its lower rouble cost structure and state financial backing. “The company’s EBITDA margin is 30%, on average, ” according to Fitch analyst Sergei Grishunin, “which exceeds the EBITDA margin of market leader De Beers, which had an EBITDA margin of 17% in 2008 and 2007.”

According to Grishunin, the value of the Kremlin’s financial support for Alrosa this year will include Rb45 billion in procurement of rough diamonds for the state stockpile agency Gokhran in the first half of the year; and Rb44 billion in financing from the state VTB Bank for covering some of Alrosa’s maturing obligations to foreign lenders. At the current exchange rate, these inputs are worth $1.5 billion and $1.4 billion, respectively.
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by John Helmer - Monday, June 8th, 2009
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