Xavier Rolet resigns from Russian fertiliser group hit by sanctions
Xavier Rolet, the previous head of the London Inventory Alternate, has stepped down as chair of Russian fertiliser group PhosAgro, after its chief government was added to the EU’s sanctions listing of businessmen near the Kremlin.
The 62-year-old, who ran the LSE for nearly a decade, joins various UK enterprise people who find themselves resigning from firms with shut Russian ties. Greg Barker, a former Conservative minister, stepped down as chair of EN+ this week.
Below Rolet, the LSE grew into one of many world’s largest exchanges by market capitalisation. Whereas he was main the alternate, London turned the go-to marketplace for Russian firms to lift worldwide cash. PhosAgro floated on the LSE in 2011 in a $540mn preliminary public providing.
Rolet was appointed chair of PhosAgro in 2018 after leaving the LSE in 2017 beneath stress from the board to resolve a governance disaster. He was awarded the Order of Friendship of the Russian Federation in 2017.
In defence of Russian firms going through sanctions, he wrote on LinkedIn this week that “the logic of utilizing the load of sanctions, boycotts and public stress to punish LSE-listed firms for failures of coverage and negotiation frankly eludes me”.
PhosAgro introduced that Andrey Guryev, its chief government, was additionally resigning. As the top of Europe’s largest producer of phosphate-based fertilisers, the oligarch benefited from the Russian authorities’s choices, mentioned the EU, because it introduced sanctions on people this week.
The corporate was “largely linked with the Russian authorities and the income it generates is subsequently an essential income for the Russian authorities”, the EU added.
Guryev was among the many 14 enterprise folks with shut hyperlinks to the Kremlin that the EU added to its sanctions listing on Wednesday in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The brand new measures goal executives at a few of Russia’s largest firms exterior of the banking, oil and gasoline industries, together with the billionaire house owners of huge coal and fertiliser producers.
On Thursday, the UK authorities imposed sanctions on Russian oligarchs, together with Roman Abramovich, the proprietor of Chelsea soccer membership, Oleg Deripaska, the founding father of London-listed metals group EN+, and Igor Sechin, chief government of Rosneft.
