Late yesterday evening, Mikhail Kasyanov finished another meeting on the restructuring of RAO UES of Russia. According to eyewitnesses, the head of RAO UES Anatoly Chubais can celebrate victory: his plan for reforming the energy company is liked by almost everyone, and, most likely, it will be approved in one form or another at the government meeting on December 14.

The document describing the reform currently exists in the form of a draft presidential decree drawn up by the Ministry of Economic Development. It is almost entirely based on the plan for restructuring RAO UES, prepared by the holding's top managers back in the spring of 2000. It states that transport and production in the industry should be separated from each other and that energy producers should be forced to compete with each other. To this end, several generating companies are planned to be created from the power plants owned by RAO UES or its subsidiaries, and RAO will eventually sell its controlling stakes in them. All major electric networks, on the contrary, are supposed to be gathered into RAO, turning the holding into a network company. The reform is supposed to be carried out in three stages, each of which provides for greater liberalization of the energy market. It will last from 2001 to 2005.

"The position of the government and the power industry is unanimous, and this is the most important agreement reached at the meeting," said Economic Development Minister German Gref after the meeting with the Prime Minister. "We included in our text all the comments made by our colleagues from other departments. Only the proposals of the Ministry of Atomic Energy and the Ministry of Energy were almost not taken into account, since they do not quite coincide with our opinion," a source in the Ministry of Economic Development clarified to Vedomosti. However, Gref himself promised to take into account one of the main proposals of the Ministry of Atomic Energy - to increase the state's share in the grid company, into which RAO UES will be transformed during the reform, to 75% of the shares. "This can be done by buying out or exchanging shares (for assets of generating companies - Vedomosti)," explained the official of the Ministry of Economic Development, "and now everyone is leaning in favor of an exchange." According to him, the state does not need to increase its share in this company to 100%. "We need minority shareholders. They put pressure on management, forcing them to make the reporting of any company more transparent," he specified.

Meanwhile, it is the minority shareholders who now remain the only party dissatisfied with the plans of officials and RAO UES. "The chapter devoted to the protection of shareholders in the document of the Ministry of Economic Development does not provide for greater protection of our rights than is guaranteed to us by law. This is what upsets us. We were counting on additional guarantees from the management and the board of directors," one of their representatives told Vedomosti yesterday evening.

Chubais convinced the government