Alrosa to reinvest most 2009 profit, pay modest dividend
MOSCOW. June 28 (Interfax) - Alrosa will pay a modest dividend for 2009 and reinvest the bulk of last year's profit in its on-going capital-intensive effort to build deep mines to offset future production losses as near-surface ores at diamond pipes in Yakutia become depleted.
The Russian diamond monopoly said following its AGM on June 26 that the shareholders accepted a dividend of 916.3 rubles per share or a total of 249.9 million rubles for 2009.
Net profit was 2.348 billion rubles last year. The supervisory board in May this year recommended that 1.9 billion rubles be invested in the deep mines, exploration and other areas. According to the voting at the AGM, 113.7 million rubles of last year's profit will be put into the reserve fund and 70.5 million rubles will be used for long-term financial investment.
Alrosa did not originally plan to pay any dividends for 2009. It did not pay dividends for 2008, which it closed with losses.
The Russian Federal Property Agency (Rosimuschestvo) received a controlling stake in Alrosa when the diamond miner was "federalized". The agency holds 50.9256%, Yakutia's Property Relations Ministry owns 32.0002%, eight districts of Yakutia own 8.0003% and individuals and corporate bodies own the remaining 9.0739%.
The state representatives and independent directors on the old supervisory board were re-elected to the new one at the AGM. Yakutia replaced two representatives.
Independent directors were elected to the supervisory board for the first time at last year's AGM. The independent directors are Sergei Dubinin, a board member at VTB Capital; Vladimir Rybkin, head of the State Precious Metals and Gemstones Repository (Gokhran); Anatoly Tikhonov, first deputy chairman of Vnesheconombank (VEB); Yakov Urinson, deputy general director of the Russian Nanotechnology Corporation; and Ilya Yuzhanov, a former Russian antimonopoly policy minister who is a member of the supervisory board at Nomos Bank .
Yakutia is represented on the new board by Gennady Alexeyev, its first deputy prime minister; Yegor Borisov, its former prime minister who was recently appointed as the republic's president; Viktor Yefimov, property relations minister; Aisen Nikolayev, head of the Yakutia presidential and governmental administration; Alexei Struchkov, Yakutia's economic development minister; and Vladimir Tikhonov, head of the Suntarsky district administration.
The board also contains Fyodor Andreyev, Alrosa's president; Alexander Akhpolov, head of the Russian Finance Ministry's administrative department; Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin; and Ivan Demyanov, vice president of Alrosa.
LLC FBK will audit Alrosa for 2010.