| Aeroflot has a new chairman of the board of directors On the third attempt, the board of directors of Aeroflot carried out last Friday the directive of Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov to elect the chairman of the board, Alexander Zurabov. Two previous meetings scheduled for May 5 and 16 did not take place. Formally, due to lack of quorum.
The actual reason was the active reluctance of the company's general director Valery Okulov to see his first deputy for commerce and finance, Alexander Zurabov, at the head of the board of directors. However, in addition to his position at Aeroflot, Mr. Zurabov has also been Mikhail Kasyanov’s aviation advisor on a voluntary basis since January of this year. On Friday, Mr. Okulov remained true to himself and cast the only vote against Zurabov's election. Two members of the council were absent from the meeting - deputy head of the FSB department Georgy Kornilov and executive director of the Moscow representative office of NCH Advisors, Inc Gregory Finger. The remaining eight members of the council, including himself, voted for Zurabov. The First Deputy General Director for Commerce joined the board of directors as a representative of the state. Therefore, he could not evade Kasyanov’s directive regarding voting.
On the Aeroflot board of directors, formed at the shareholders meeting on April 26, state representatives occupy 8 of the 11 seats. Immediately after the shareholder meeting, Mikhail Kasyanov gave state representatives a directive to elect Zurabov as chairman. Therefore, his assumption of this post was actually predetermined at the very first organizational meeting of the council. Nevertheless, the passive resistance of Okulov’s circle of government officials delayed this moment for almost a month. Yesterday, Alexander Zurabov told the Vremya Novostei newspaper through an assistant that in his new post he expects to strengthen the role of the board of directors in the management of the company, especially in such strategic issues as the fate of the stalled project for the construction of the new Sheremetyevo-3 airport terminal. He also approved the activities of his predecessor in this post - Russian Minister of Transport Sergei Frank. Zurabov, however, could not resist noting that there was a conflict of interest in the latter’s activities, predetermined by his dual role as minister as the head of the industry and the head of the transport company.
Alexander Zurabov denies that strengthening the board of directors under his leadership will mean a reduction in the powers of General Director Okulov. However, the latter apparently has his own opinion on this matter. An indirect evidence of the ongoing contradictions may be the fact that, having decided on a single organizational issue last Friday, the Aeroflot board of directors took a time out. According to Mr. Zurabov, the next meeting will take place only on the 20th of June, and its agenda has not yet been determined. Most likely, it will be about the really important problem of adjusting the company's budget, whose income this year is behind the plan due to the war in Iraq and the SARS epidemic in Asia. Aeroflot's board of directors will have to decide: either to reduce the profit target or to compensate for lost income by cutting expenses. Mikhail KUKUSHKIN |
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