All news

Putin hopes for soon settlement of disputes between NorNickel owners

The corporate conflict between two owners of NorNickel – Vladimir Potanin’s Interros and Oleg Deripaska’s RUSAL continues for several years now

MOSCOW, August 20 (Itar-Tass) — Russia’s President Vladimir Putin hopes for a soon settlement of disputes between owners of Norilsk Nickel mining and smelting company.

He said owners “have not settled all the issues between themselves.”

“We hope that in the interests of the production and the people working at the enterprise, all arguments between them would be over,” the president said on Monday during a television space bridge during a meeting devoted to the Day of Miner.

The corporate conflict between two owners of NorNickel – Vladimir Potanin’s Interros and Oleg Deripaska’s RUSAL continues for several years now. RUSAL has prosecuted Interros and NorNickel several times both in Russia and abroad. The suits were on various decisions of the board of directors, for example on three buyback programmes. The buyback was for 16.9 percent of the enterprise’s stock worth nine billion dollars.

Norilsk Nickel is a diversified mining and smelting company, a major producer of nickel and palladium, a leading producer of platinum, cobalt, copper and rhodium. The company produces also gold, silver, iridium, osmium, sullen, ruthenium and tellurium.

Nornickel’s shareholders are Interros /28.08 percent/, RUSAL, a world leader of the aluminium sector, /25 percent/, the Netherland’s Trafigura Beheer BV /about eight percent/, and owners of Metalloinvest Holding /up to four percent/.