SPIMEX chief Artemyev could join Unipro board

MOSCOW. May 29 (Interfax) - Igor Artemyev, president of St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange (SPIMEX) and the former head of the Federal Anti-monopoly Service, has been nominated for election to the board of directors at PJSC Unipro , according to information for the generating company's annual shareholders meeting.

Other candidates include Vitaly Korolev, deputy head of the Federal Anti-monopoly Service responsible for the fuel and energy complex without electricity, as well as housing and utilities.

The information for the AGM does not specify current positions held by the candidates; several board members, such as Unipro's current chief, Vasily Nikonov, who is also a candidate for election to the new board, are known to have worked at Rosneft and the group's entities, in particular Andrei Shishkin, Oksana Tarasenko and Dina Malikova.

Mikhail Kirpichnikov could also join the board - his full name matches that of an academician at the Russian Academy of Sciences - as could Alexander Nekipelov, director of the Moscow School of Economics at Moscow State University, previously a member of the Rosneft board of directors, and Alexei Pavlov, who shares the same full name as the deputy head of the Federal Property Management Agency.

The AGM takes place in absentia on June 21, with shareholders on record as of May 27 entitled to vote.

The board has recommended a 2023 dividend waiver.

Unipro owns five thermal power plants with combined capacity of 11,275 MW in Russia.

Germany's Uniper owns 83.73% of shares in Unipro, which have been under the Russian Federal Property Agency's management since April 2023. Uniper said in the spring that it had effectively been unable to exercise day-to-day management of the Russian asset since the end of 2022.