Rusal Wins Extra Norilsk Board Seat, Metalloinvest Drops Out

United Co. Rusal, the world’s largest aluminum producer, had three of its executives, including billionaire Oleg Deripaska, elected to the board of OAO GMK Norilsk Nickel (MNOD), increasing its seats by one.

Billionaire Vladimir Potanin’s Interros Holding, which is locked in a shareholder dispute with Rusal over management of Norilsk, has four of its executives on the board, according to the results of annual shareholders meeting announced to reporters today in Moscow. One of the four, Andrei Bugrov, was re-elected chairman.

Billionaire Alisher Usmanov’s partner Farhad Moshiri wasn’t elected after the Norilsk stake held by their Metalloinvest dropped to 3.6 percent from 4 percent following last year’s share buyback by the nickel miner.

Metalloinvest supported independent directors with its votes because Moshiri decided he can’t currently effectively combine his role as Metalloinvest chairman with serving on the Norilsk board, a Metalloinvest official said, requesting not to be identified in accordance with his company’s policy.

Norilsk Chief Executive Officer Vladimir Strzalkovsky, Claude Dauphin, a member of the management board of Trafigura Beheer BV, and Alexander Voloshin, former chief of staff to President Boris Yeltsin, were also elected.

Norilsk’s board has 13 seats, with the rest held by independent directors.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ilya Khrennikov in Moscow at ikhrennikov@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Viljoen at jviljoen@bloomberg.net