However, this is a rather large financial volume and more than 70 thousand employees of the company will participate in the program. The issuing company will be responsible for their acquisition, and Rosbank will be in charge of the operational part, which actually confirms the interpretations of experts about the creation of an ecosystem of digital products by Potanin. So the stuffing about increasing the portfolio by the head of Norilsk Nickel is not confirmed: such statements are only beneficial for companies that have lost the habit of bonuses to employees.
Pilot project
On April 14, Norilsk Nickel disclosed the details of an incentive program for employees, which involves turning the company’s employees into its beneficiaries. It turned out that fear has big eyes, and, contrary to market rumors, we are talking about a very modest share of 0.27%. That is how many MMC shares will be bought by Digital Assets as part of the Digital Investor corporate program during 2023, from early May to late December.
As the Company found out, Digital Assets has signed an agreement with the Project Services company controlled by Norilsk Nickel. According to him, the company will become an issuer of digital financial assets (DFA), which will be further distributed among MMC employees. It will be possible to buy shares both on the Moscow Exchange – with the involvement of a broker, and on the over-the-counter market. The number of shares permitted to be purchased under the agreement is no more than 407,344. Based on the current value of Norilsk Nickel shares, the purchase of such a stake could cost 6.27 billion rubles.
The head of Norilsk Nickel, Vladimir Potanin, had plans to introduce an employee incentive system for several years. In March 2023, employees were informed about the launch of the Digital Investor program, under which the MMC will finance their purchase of tokens pegged in value to the company’s assets. Every employee with at least one year of work experience will be able to participate in the program. The number of CFAs, the allocation of which will be financed by the company, will depend on the length of service of the employee: the higher it is, the more assets you can get.
The circulation of tokens will take place on the Atomize blockchain platform, the first in Russia to receive a license from the Central Bank. The operational part will be managed by Rosbank, the Digital Assets company will be responsible for the safety of assets.
Among the key advantages of DFA are the transparency of investments (for which the distributed ledger technology is responsible), the absence of intermediaries in the financial market, and the possibility of splitting. Unlike a stock, CFA can be split up to a hundredth, which is very democratic for investors. It is important that the program is a pilot one, and if employees show interest in it, it can be extended and continued.
dispelling rumors
At first, there were more questions and conjectures than facts – according to some messages that appeared on Telegram channels, Potanin was going to increase the new 25%. But Norilsk Nickel itself dotted the i’s – the block of shares for the program will be only a quarter of one percent. In addition, none of Norilsk Nickel’s shareholders, neither Potanin himself (his Interros holding owns about 37% of MMC), nor RUSAL (owns a 26% stake in MMC), are not limited in their right to buy shares. The head of Interros can increase the package at any time along the classical trajectory, and if it were Potanin’s desire to increase his influence in the company, he would hardly have gone for the creation of such complex schemes that require millions of investments in digitalization.
But the launch of a motivational program is an old dream of the head of Norilsk Nickel. It not only restores historical justice (before privatization, part of the shares belonged to the company’s employees), but also creates an environment among employees similar to IT companies and startups. Norilsk Nickel is actually creating an ecosystem of digital products from friendly companies, crypto expert Evgeny Kaminsky said in a conversation with the Company. In the future, this will open up opportunities to better understand the users of their products and improve the customer experience for them, he noted.
Nevertheless, for the last month the market has been full of rumors: the desire to involve employees in the process was declared “schematosis”. The creation of a negative informational background around the program of “people’s capitalism” in Norilsk Nickel took place against the backdrop of many years of confrontation between the main shareholders of the company – Vladimir Potanin and RUSAL, founded by Oleg Deripaska. If Potanin was in favor of investing in the development of the company, then RUSAL was in favor of maximizing dividends from Norilsk Nickel.
Against the background of the changes taking place in Norilsk Nickel, including the payment of the CFA, employees and shareholders of RUSAL may have doubts about the ability of their management to effectively manage the company. By the way, the total amount of dividends that RUSAL received from Norilsk Nickel in recent years amounted to about 500 billion rubles. RUSAL itself in August 2022 decided to pay dividends for the first time in five years.