Potanin: Norilsk Nickel employees will receive a stake in the company

Vladimir Potanin in an interview RBC spoke about the People’s Capitalism program, as a result of which the company’s employees will become its beneficiaries. Earlier, the company’s president announced that he was transferring up to 50 percent of Rosbank’s shares to a charitable foundation and 10 percent to bank employees.

“The idea is to, in a sense, restore some historical justice – when Norilsk Nickel was privatized, about 25% of the shares belonged to employees. But, unfortunately, employees were not able to take full advantage of this kind of investment, many sold these shares. I would like to restore this historical justice and bring 25% of Norilsk Nickel shares back to people, including employees,” he said.

To date, retail investors own 10% of Norilsk Nickel’s shares. The campaign to transfer the share to employees in Norilsk Nickel is designed for 10 years. During this time, the share of retail investors and employees should grow to 25%.

Vladimir Potanin emphasizes that in order to implement the program, it is necessary to be technologically prepared as well. Employees of Norilsk Nickel will receive their stake in the company through digital financial assets (DFA). CFAs can be split, that is, less than one share can be transferred through them, and it is impossible to block through a bank or a broker, so this type of asset is the most accessible in the Russian infrastructure. Also, the CFA will help to avoid the mistakes of the past privatization, since it is impossible to get rid of them immediately by converting them into cash. “One of the problems of early privatization was that people did not have time to understand what this property is, what these shares, shares, and so on are. Therefore, they did not critically assess which assets were good and which were bad, and very easily got out of them, succumbing to persuasion,” explains Vladimir Potanin.

The most important thing in the program of “People’s Capitalism” is that this way the company works not only in the interests of large shareholders and managers. “It seems to me that this is an interesting direction in social terms, it will help to somewhat reduce the tension between the poor and the rich, between employees and owners. That is, to remove the public and social tension that exists around business, which does not allow the profession of a businessman to become fully respected and revered in society, like, for example, a firefighter or a doctor,” Potanin concludes.