OREANDA-NEWS. On June 28, 2008 Sistema (LSE: SSA), the largest public diversified corporation in Russia and the CIS, which manages fast growing companies operating in the consumer services sector, announced the decisions made at the Annual General Meeting of its shareholders ("AGM") on June 28, 2008, reported the press-centre of Sistema.

The AGM approved the election of two new members to the Board of Directors, including an independent [non-executive] director, a prominent economist, Lord Robert Skidelsky. The Board of Directors, therefore, comprises 4 independent [non-executive] directors and consists of 10 members.

The shareholders approved the election of the members of the Board of Directors as follows:

- Vladimir Evtushenkov - Chairman

- Alexander Goncharuk - Non-executive Director

- Vyacheslav Kopiev - Non-executive Director

- Dmitry Zubov - Non-executive Director

- Evgeny Novitsky - Non-executive Director

- Sergey Cheremin - Vice President, Head of External Relations

- Alexander Gorbatovsky - Non-executive and Independent Director

- Ron Sommer - Non-executive and Independent Director

- Stephan Newhouse - Non-executive and Independent Director

- Robert Skidelsky - Non-executive and Independent Director

At the statutory Board meeting following the AGM, the Sistema Board of Directors appointed Vladimir Evtushenkov as Chairman.

The AGM also approved an annual dividend of RUR 0.25 per ordinary share, or approximately US\\$ 0.21 per Global Depositary Receipt ("GDR"), for the twelve months ended December 31, 2007, to be paid to holders of Sistema's shares as at the record date of May 17, 2008. The dividend payment amounts to over RUR 2.4 billion or approximately US\\$ 102 million.

Audit-Garantia-M was appointed as Sistema's Russian Accounting Standards auditor for 2008, and Deloitte & Touche Regional Consulting Services Limited was appointed as Sistema's US GAAP auditor for 2008.

In addition, the AGM approved the election of the members of the Audit Committee and approved new versions of Regulations on the Board of Directors and the Executive Board.

Robert Jacob Alexander Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky of Tilton, was born on April 25, 1939 in Kharbin in the family of the Russian emigrants. Robert Skidelsky graduated from Brighton College and Oxford University. From 1970 to 1976, he was an Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. Robert Skidelsky is a prominent British economist. He is a member of the House of Lords (since 1991), a Fellow of the British Academy (since 1994), and a Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick (since 1990).

Robert Skidelsky is also a General Adviser to the Russian Association for the Protection of Investor Rights. Robert Skidelsky is a contributor to a number of well-known publications, such as New Statesman, Prospect and New York Review of Books. Robert Skidelsky is also an author of a three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes (1983-2000) and the bestseller "The World After Communism" (1995).