Deputy Prime Minister To Join Electricity Trader Inter RAO

Last month, Sechin was appointed to head a new government commission to oversee the electricity industry, which needs billions of dollars of investment to increase capacity and upgrade infrastructure. The government is looking to make sure that investors who bought power generators during the breakup of Unified Energy System follow through with the investment programs they took on while buying the assets.

Now Igor Sechin is among the nominees to join the board of state-controlled electricity trader Inter RAO.The company is controlled by Rosatom, the state nuclear corporation. The state owns 42.49 percent of the company, which listed shares on the MICEX in July.

The government may have chosen Sechin to lead its representatives on the board because Inter RAO has an international business, The Moscow Times cites Oleg Zotikov, an analyst at brokerage Veles Capital.

Inter RAO shareholders will pick an 11-member board from 20 nominees. One current member, Alexander Voloshin, who served as chief of Kremlin staff under President Boris Yeltsin and at the beginning of Vladimir Putin's tenure as president, is prominently not on the list of nominees.

Sechin had a chance to discuss Inter RAO's plans before the news of his nomination. In September, he met with Fulvio Conti, the chief executive of the Italian utility Enel, to talk about possible joint energy projects in third countries.

Author: Ksenia Kochneva