| Irkutskenergo changes its director and tries to prevent unfriendly privatization Irkutskenergo, the largest Russian energy company that is not part of RAO UES of Russia, will most likely change its general director next week. As a representative of the company's shareholders told Vremya Novostei yesterday, a meeting of the energy company's board of directors will be held on September 13, the agenda of which includes issues about the termination of the powers of the current leader, Vladimir Kolmogorov, and the election of a new general director. Meanwhile, yesterday the shares of the Irkutsk energy company rose sharply in price - at the end of the trading session on the MICEX, quotes rose by 17.8%, and trading was suspended for an hour as many as two times in order to cool the ardor of portfolio investors. " Rosimushchestvo".
Irkutskenergo is actually controlled by the structures of aluminum entrepreneurs Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg - they together own about 49% of the company's shares (and the latter, according to experts, has about 10-13% of the shares). The chairman of the board of directors is traditionally a representative of the state (on September 13, it is planned to elect the deputy head of Rosimushchestvo, Yuri Medvedev, to this post), and the general director since 2001 has been Mr. Deripaska’s ally, Mr. Kolmogorov. Representatives of Mr. Vekselberg have only been members of the board of directors of the energy company for more than two years.
The Irkutsk energy system has always positioned itself as an independent business of aluminum oligarchs - highly profitable and long-term, and not at all, in the words of one of the board members of RAO UES Pavel Smirnov, a “boiler room for aluminum workers” (the Bratsk aluminum plant of RUSAL and the Irkutsk aluminum plant are located in the Irkutsk region SUAL aluminum plant). It was after the success of the Irkutsk electric power business that the oligarchs began to take a serious interest in Russian electric power assets and squeezed portfolio investors out of the shareholders of RAO and most of its regional subsidiaries.
At the same time, Irkutskenergo did not want to reform in accordance with the plans of Anatoly Chubais and the Ministry of Economic Development, but chose its own model of business division, while maintaining a vertically integrated structure (which quite often met resistance from RAO). And one of the ideologists of such a system was precisely Mr. Kolmogorov. It was he who was offered to head Irkutskenergo in 2001, citing the experience of managing the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric station (now controlled by Mr. Deripaska’s structures), and before that - the entire energy system of Eastern Siberia.
Now the task of restructuring the business by Mr. Kolmogorov has actually been completed, says a source in the company, so at the beginning of this year he decided to leave Irkutskenergo and take up another business within the framework of Mr. Deripaska’s energy business. And the deputy general director of Eurosibenergo (manages the energy assets of the entrepreneur) Vladimir Kiryukhin told Vremya Novostei that Mr. Kolmogorov will head a new structure that will be engaged in research and development work. It cannot be ruled out that this structure will become one of the main developers of the development strategy of the United Machine-Building Company, created on the basis of Power Machines, of which Mr. Deripaska is going to become a shareholder. But even if this does not happen, Mr. Kolmogorov will in any case have to solve the problem of seriously reducing costs in the electricity business of the aluminum oligarch due to the growing wear and tear of equipment.
The new head of Irkutskenergo will apparently be the company's executive director, Sergei Emdin. However, this will only happen if state representatives support his candidacy. If this does not happen or there is no directive at all, both questions about the general director, as Mr. Kiryukhin says, will be removed from the agenda of the board of directors. An Interfax source at Rosimushchestvo claims that “the issue of the resignation of General Director Kolmogorov is still being discussed.”
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Economic Development, traditionally considered a ally of RAO UES, is apparently already planning to take advantage of the situation with the change of head of Irkutskenergo and propose to de facto privatize the state stake in the energy company by introducing it into the capital of HydroOGK. This idea was expressed last Tuesday by Mr. Adrosov. “These procedures can be carried out in the near future,” he told Interfax. “This contributes to solving the problem of maintaining state control over HydroOGK after the company’s transition to a single share with the hydroelectric power plants that are part of it, and will also ensure the unity of management of hydroelectric power generation in the Russian Federation.” However, Mr. Androsov modestly kept silent that the transition of HydroOGK to state control will take place only at the end of the electric power industry reform, and until that time this company will be under the complete control of RAO UES of Russia. And this means, firstly, that the state will not have direct access to Irkutskenergo, and secondly, that RAO will be able to de facto absorb part of its competitor. And this directly contradicts the goals of reforming the electric power industry. In addition, as a source close to the shareholders of Irkutskenergo says, “Mr. Androsov apparently forgot that in addition to hydroelectric power plants, the company also includes thermal power plants, networks, sales enterprises, and repair facilities,” so nothing about What kind of “unity of management of hydro generation in the Russian Federation” is not discussed when this question is posed, but “the desire to redistribute influence on Irkutskenergo” . The source added that Mr. Androsov’s idea has not been discussed in the corridors of power and is unlikely to be discussed. Mr. Androsov could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Nevertheless, portfolio investors yesterday began to buy up that small package of securities of the Irkutsk energy company that is traded on the market (analysts estimate its volume at 8-9%). “The state is not an effective owner,” says Aton Investment Company analyst Dmitry Scriabin. “The shares are growing because investors expect managers from HydroOGK and RAO UES to join the company, who are quite effective in terms of managing energy systems and are more profit-oriented.” According to him, the growth of shares is also fueled by information that HydroOGK will switch to a single share - in this case it will be the world's largest hydro company and the largest energy company in Russia.
There has not been such a rapid growth in energy company quotations on the market since last fall, when Gazprom bought shares of Mosenergo. On October 5, 2004, the MICEX also suspended trading in shares twice, while quotes for Mosenergo securities rose by more than 75% in the first hour of trading. Nikolay GORELOV, Gyuzel GUBEYDULINA |
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