Vice Premier Igor Sechin received yesterday the first project in new capacity. He chaired the BOD of United Shipbuilding Corp. with the order portfolio of $12 billion. Sechin won’t change the force balance in industry. In essence, shipbuilding had had no supervisor, and Rostekhnologii CEO Sergei Chemezov had long manifested the lack of interest in it.
Russia’s new PM Vladimir Putin defined the scope of Sechin’s activities at the first cabinet sitting outside Moscow. Vice Premier Sechin will be the CEO at United Shipbuilding Corp., Putin told his ministers in St. Petersburg.
“Sergei Naryshkin has moved to the president’s administration and will no longer be able to chair the BOD of United Shipbuilding Corp., Igor Sechin will be the new CEO,” Vice Premier Sergei Ivanov explained without elaborating on the actual reasons that would have prevented Naryshkin from executing the shipbuilding duties. Until recently, Ivanov had supervised the project of corporation’s creation.
“I think the reason is not that Sergei Naryshkin proved unequal to the project,” said a source that worked in Putin’s administration. “Putin is shifting the management center of companies of strategic interest to the state to the level of prime-minister’s structures.”
The establishment of United Shipbuilding Corp. was spelled out in Vladimir Putin’s decree of March 21, 2007. It was incorporated November 14, 2007 with the authorized capital of 1 billion rubles. The government controls 100 percent in it.
“In shipbuilding, we have government’s assets and private shipyards, and the latter are not far and few between. It was decided that, represented by the United Shipbuilding Corp., the government will propose to private capital to join forces and money to construct new shipyards, starting from the Western region,” Ivanov said, explicitly specifying for the first time that the private business will be prompted to contribute assets to the corporation.