04 November 2003 13:17
New YUKOS chief says no big changes afoot
The new head of Russian oil giant YUKOS said on Tuesday after taking over the reins that he planned no major changes in operations in the embattled firm.
Simon Kukes, a Russian-born U.S. citizen, mapped out his plans for the company as President Vladimir Putin tried to calm foreign investor worries over the case which analysts say points to Kremlin interference in big business. "We don't plan any changes in company behaviour because the company is behaving normally. Everything stays intact and we have a strong team," Kukes told a news conference.
Kukes, who emigrated to the United States in 1977 and has been involved in the oil business for 25 years, took over on Monday from detained billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky who stepped down, saying he wanted to spare the company any further problems.
Russia's financial markets appeared to stabilise after stocks jumped on Monday on news of Khodorkovsky's resignation. But YUKOS shares were down 2.61 percent in the morning, putting them at more than 15 percent below their level before Khodorkovsky's gunpoint arrest on October 25 on charges of tax evasion and fraud.
The appointment of Kukes to replace Khodorkovsky appeared to have reassured investors that the oil company would be run effectively. Analysts said the appointment of Kukes, who helped lead the merger of another Russian oil major TNK and BP earlier this year, would trigger speculation that talks for Exxon Mobil to buy a stake in YUKOS would be back on. But they doubted the move would lay to rest the confrontation between Khodorkovsky and the Kremlin and fear the company might suffer in the medium term from the loss of his strategic vision.
Khodorkovsky still owns a controlling stake in YUKOS. Prosecutors froze the stake last week in a move that rattled investor confidence in Putin's economic reforms.
Putin, heading later on Tuesday to Italy for a Russia-European Union summit in Rome, sought to mollify foreign opinion. "In the United States too in the last two years a score of company bosses have been called before the courts," Putin told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in an interview. "But nothing extraordinary happened and no one questioned the existence of the rule of law. For us too, it is nothing exceptional. It's that previously, those who had money did not end up in front of a court."
He said the Kremlin was merely seeking to enforce the law. But he repeated previous comments that he would oppose moves to review the 1990s post-Soviet sell-off of Russia's state assets and said his government would "continue along the lines of reforms and the market economy."
Kukes will head a seven-member executive committee in YUKOS. Two other key figures in the team are Americans, including Steven Theede, who is executive director of YUKOS-Moscow, the management company for the group and effective number two in the company's hierarchy.
It was not clear what difference this would make, if any, for the legal case against Khodorkovsky. But Izvestia daily quoted unidentified sources in the general prosecutors' office as saying his departure would have no bearing on the criminal case against him.
[http://gazeta.ru/] |
RUSSIA IN FACTS
