Boris Kovalchuk leaves Inter RAO

According to Kommersant, Boris Kovalchuk, who has headed Inter RAO for the last fifteen years, may leave the company in the near future. According to Kommersant’s interlocutors, the top manager “will be looking for a promotion.” The company could be headed instead by Sergei Dregval, a native of the administration of St. Petersburg and the former head of Rosseti Ural.

The long-time head of Inter RAO, Boris Kovalchuk, may soon leave his post as head of the company, according to a number of Kommersant’s interlocutors in the market. According to Kommersant’s interlocutors, several months ago it was decided that Mr. Kovalchuk was “going for a promotion.” According to them, he was offered four options – to head Gazprom, Rosneft, become Deputy Prime Minister for the Fuel and Energy Complex instead of Alexander Novak, or become the governor of St. Petersburg. Kommersant’s interlocutors do not know which of these options Mr. Kovalchuk chose. Inter RAO declined to comment.

Kommersant’s interlocutors drew attention to a possible rotation in the management of Inter RAO immediately after the former vice-governor of St. Petersburg Sergei Dregval joined the company in February. They believed that he would become Mr. Kovalchuk’s replacement. Mr. Dregval joined the company’s board on March 1 for a period of five years. In the administration of St. Petersburg, Dregval oversaw the energy sector; before that he headed Rosseti Ural.

Boris Kovalchuk is the son of Yuri Kovalchuk, a longtime ally of Vladimir Putin. Boris Kovalchuk joined Inter RAO in June 2009, first as a member of the board of directors. In November 2009, after the departure of the head of the company, Evgeny Dod, to RusHydro, he became acting chairman of the board of Inter RAO, then in June 2010 he was elected chairman of the board. Before joining the company in 2006–2009, Boris Kovalchuk headed the department of priority national projects of the Russian government, and in 2009 he briefly held the post of deputy general director for development of the state corporation Rosatom.

At the beginning of February, Boris Kovalchuk summed up the preliminary results of the company’s activities since 2009 at a meeting with Vladimir Putin. According to him, the company’s revenue from 2009 to 2023 increased from 68 billion to 1.35 trillion rubles, EBITDA increased from 11 billion to 180 billion rubles. During this period, the company achieved a net profit of 135 billion rubles, having avoided losses in 2009.

Inter RAO has historically been a structure of RAO UES of Russia, responsible for the import and export of electricity. But in 2008–2011, the company also acquired the foreign assets of RAO and consolidated a significant part of the state-owned energy industry. Inter RAO is one of the largest quasi-state energy companies: at the end of 2022, Rosneftegaz owned 26.37% of the company, its subsidiary Inter RAO Capital – 29.56%. Another 8.57% belonged to the Federal Grid Company – Rosseti, and 34.24% were in free circulation. The company currently does not disclose its shareholder structure.

Under Boris Kovalchuk, in 2011, a “large additional issue” of the holding was carried out, during which the shares of Inter RAO were received by FSK, RusHydro and MMC Norilsk Nickel, as well as state energy assets of the Federal Property Management Agency that were not subject to privatization. In 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin allowed Rosneftegaz to invest in state-owned fuel and energy companies, after which in 2013 the holding consolidated the shares of Rosimushchestvo and Rosatom. Norilsk Nickel divested its shares at the end of 2015. The next chain of transactions occurred in 2018, when RusHydro and, partially, FSK sold their shares (they got rid of 10%). In recent years, the company has focused on strengthening the gas turbine engineering segment; in April 2023, the company acquired the assets of the Ural Turbine Plant.

Tatiana Dyatel