Rusal’s billionaire chairman resigns

Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg yesterday quit as chairman of the largest aluminium producer in the world, UC Rusal, saying the heavily indebted firm was in deep crisis after a long battle with rival oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

UC Rusal owns Aughinish Alumina in West Limerick, where the company employs 450 people at Europe’s largest alumina refinery.

Vekselberg’s exit widens a rift with controlling shareholder Deripaska, who had sought to build a Russian metals and mining business on a global scale by merging Rusal with Norilsk Nickel — the world’s top nickel and palladium miner.

He could now mount a legal challenge to Deripaska’s strategy to hold on to a stake in Norilsk, which, if sold, would solve the company’s debt crisis and enable it to look for other merger opportunities.

“I regret to say at this time that Rusal is in a deep crisis, caused by the actions of the management,” said Vekselberg, listed by Forbes magazine as Russia’s eighth richest man with a fortune of $12.4bn (€9.3bn).

Deripaska, a theoretical physicist who emerged triumphant from Russia’s aluminium wars of the 1990s, bought a one-quarter stake in Norilsk through Rusal four years ago but the debt-financed deal quickly turned sour when the global crisis hit.

Rusal was forced into a debt restructuring, killing Deripaska’s dream of a mega-merger.

However, he has blocked calls by his partners — Vekselberg and the billionaire politician Mikhail Prokhorov, to sell the stake back to Norilsk.

The shareholder conflict is complicated by the outsized egos of Russia’s resource oligarchs, with the principal players — including Norilsk’s main shareholder Vladimir Potanin — having a long history of often troubled relations.

— Reuters