| Lisin and Abramov swapped places Participants in the non-profit partnership (NP) “Russian Steel” recently held their annual meeting and again elected as their president the chairman of the board of directors of the Novolipetsk Iron and Steel Works, Vladimir Lisin, who already held this position in 2002. A year ago, Mr. Lisin was replaced by the president of Evrazholding, Alexander Abramov, who has now received the position of chairman of the partnership’s supervisory board.
NP "Russian Steel" was created in early October 2001 by Novolipetsk and Nizhny Tagil iron and steel plants (the latter is managed by Evrazholding). Then the consortium included the West Siberian Iron and Steel Works, the Novosibirsk coal trader Belon, Tulachermet, Koks and the Pipe Metallurgical Company. “The partnership charter states that both the president and the chairman of the supervisory board must be elected annually,” a source at Russian Steel explains the logic of the castling. According to him, the reshuffle does not imply a change in emphasis in the partnership’s action program. Russian Steel has never hidden that the main objective of the partnership is consolidated lobbying of the interests of metallurgists in government structures. “The vectors of activity of business and the state must coincide - then everything will work out. So if the government is limited in knowledge, it needs to provide it with this knowledge,” explained Vladimir Lisin in an interview.
Representatives of the partnership did not talk about the annual report for 2003 and plans for further work. However, participants in the metallurgical market name among the most notable projects of Russian Steel the appeal to the government in 2002 with a request to cancel the export duty on steel, which was done. The NP's proposal in 2003 to increase the export duty on scrap has so far remained unanswered. Less successful projects include NP’s attempt to defend control over Kuzbassugol: having failed to reach a compromise on the management of this company with the owner of its controlling stake, Severstal, the partnership sold its 48% stake in the spring of 2003 to the MDM group.
Investment analysts do not consider Russian Steel to be an effective entity. The traditional goals of the association (gain access to raw materials, new markets, integrate the production chain) are not faced by the partnership participants. Russian Steel itself emphasizes that “this is not a non-profit project, but an infrastructure one, containing a set of business principles” (for example, disapproval of the use of administrative forms of regulation).
True, in 2002 the creators of the NP announced that they could become a metallurgical holding. “The companies included in the partnership have already taken the first steps towards organizing joint purchases of raw materials and sales of products. This may take a year or two, or maybe six months,” Vladimir Lisin said then. Alexander Abramov also reported that “consultations are underway.” But, according to one of the market participants, “as long as enterprises are controlled by such ambitious, independent and self-sufficient owners, no mergers in the industry should be expected, and all talk about consolidation is the implementation of the recommendations of PR agencies to attract attention to to yourself." Yana VIKTOROVA |
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