OREANDA-NEWS. March 25, 2008. OJSC Polyus Gold (RTS, MICEX and LSE - PLZL), Russia’s leading gold producer, today announced that RiskMetrics, the leading international proxy advisory firm, had released a series of recommendations in respect of Polyus Gold’s forthcoming Extraordinary Meeting of Shareholders called by Interros.

In the report, RiskMetrics recommends that institutional shareholders should:
Support  the amendments to the company charter agreed by Polyus Board
Reject the early Termination of Powers of the current Board
If the Board was to be terminated, then to only support the election of Lord Patrick Gillford and Valery Braiko, Polyus Gold’s existing independent directors

Evgueni Ivanov, Chief Executive of Polyus Gold, said:

“We welcome this independent report from the world’s leading proxy advisory firm, in which they reject the early termination of Polyus Gold's Board, and we urge our shareholders to follow the recommendation of the Board when voting in our forthcoming EGM. We do not believe that dismissing the Board only two months ahead of our Annual Shareholder’s Meeting can be considered in any way constructive.”