United Co. Rusal is doing everything it can to avoid punitive U.S. restrictions due for full enforcement in October, according to the Russian aluminum giant’s acting Chief Executive Officer Evgeny Nikitin.
“Right now, we are taking all the actions that should be be required to achieve the right result for the company,” Nikitin, who replaced Alexandra Bouriko, said in an interview Thursday after the company’s annual meeting in Hong Kong. “We are operating in full compliance with the conditions of our license” from the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, he said.
“The company, of course, has had some difficulties,” said Nikitin, who was named as acting CEO amid a mass exodus from the board last month. “We are now in constant contact with U.S. authorities,” he said. “I can’t speak concretely about that, but our contact is comprehensive, and always continuous.”
The U.S. sanctions fueled unprecedented volatility in global aluminum prices by casting doubt on the future of a major player in the global supply chain. Rusal churns out about 6 percent of the world’s aluminum and operates mines, smelters or refineries in locations including Guinea, Ireland and Jamaica—in addition to its main base in Russia. Aluminum is now 5 percent higher that when sanctions were announced.
Rusal’s woes are emblematic of the much more significant role that geopolitics are playing in commodities markets in the past year. The sanctions on the company are part of a U.S. package of measures targeting dozens of Russian tycoons to punish the country’s elite for actions including allegedly meddling in the U.S. elections and incursions into Ukraine. These issues are among the topics for discussion when President Donald Trump meets his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at a summit this summer.
Asked if he was hopeful that the summit could be helpful for resolving Rusal’s difficulties, Nikitin said: “We are businessmen not politicians, so we will leave the politics to the presidents.”
