Elena Egorova
| Elena Egorova | |
|---|---|
| Based in | Russia |
| Active in | Russia |
| Targeted | base metals |
It's not customary to mention a "small shareholder" on this site.
However, Ms Elena Egorova seems worthy of note and not because she's particularly wellknown or notorious (as is Gina Rinehart, the world's richest woman in the industry).
It's because, in April 2012, Elena Egorova managed to block a massive Russian bid for the Australian mining company, Flinders Mines - one which "looked all but certain to go ahead" before she made her move.
Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel offered US$572 million for Flinders Mines in early 2012. However, Ms Egorova claimed before a court in Chelyabinsk (a remote Russian city close to the border with Kazakhstan where Magnitogorsk is based) that the purchase could lead to new risks for Magnitogorsk, thus hurting the value of her investment in the steel maker.
And the judge upheld her claim. According to the Wall Sreet Journal blog: "Investors in Flinders, who had expected the deal to go through, are struggling to understand the willingness of a judge to back a tiny investor against an industrial giant that dominates the local region and has links to the Kremlin.
"Both companies vow to appeal the ruling... A Magnitogorsk spokesman said the company was trying to track down Ms. Egorova.
"The longer the case goes on, the larger the damage to Russian companies’ reputations as reliable business partners grows" [Wall Street Journal blog, 17 April 2012].
The competitive sales process for Flinders Mines was run by Citigroup, and "led to several interested parties scrutinizing the company’s books but only one offer, from Magnitogorsk" [WSJ ibid].
By the end of April 2012, Egorova's action against the proposed Magnitogorsk-Flinder's merger was still holding up [MJ 27 April 2012].
And, two months later, Egorova secured another victory, when a Russian court upheld her case. She was supported by an Alfa Bank analyst in her endeavour to prevent a transaction which - in distinct contrast to an earlier opinion on the Wall Street blog (see above) - Bloomberg news service dubbed "the most likely deal in the world to fail" [MJ 6 June 2012].
