Oleg Deripaska to deliver inaugural lecture to launch President’s Forum at HKUST

UC RUSAL (SEHK: 486, EuroNext: RUSAL/RUAL), the world’s largest aluminium producer, is pleased to announce details of CEO Oleg Deripaska’s lecture – ‘The Power of Focus: Turning Opportunity into Success’ – which is the inaugural speech of the UC RUSAL President’s Forum at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).

In his lecture, Oleg Deripaska, one of Russia’s leading businessmen, will talk about his principles, approaches and revolutionary ideas that help propel to global leadership, increase competitiveness and create solutions that can have a huge impact on the development prospects of entire industries, regions and countries.

What does it take to create the world's largest aluminum company out of a few isolated aluminium smelters that were on the verge of bankruptcy in the early 90's? How does a Russian company operate successfully on five continents, with its own technology, a powerful source of raw materials and large-scale investment projects all around the globe? What is the next step to maintain leadership positions and expand opportunities for the application of aluminum? How to address global challenges such as the increase in population (which is estimated at one billion every 11-13 years) combined with the decreasing availability and the rising cost of resources, the geographic irregularity of resource deposits and consumption centers and environmental concerns? And, how do we preserve economic growth and provide a better life quality by utilizing new energy sources and new approaches to nuclear energy?

These are just the few of the issues to be addressed during the lecture, which aims to foster the image of Russia and Russian business in Asia, one of the world’s most promising and fast developing regions. The lecture also intends to improve understanding of Russian cultural, social and economic life with younger generation of the region, which will serve to further bolster the links between the two countries.

‘The idea behind this lecture is to convince the student audience of the importance of a pro-active approach to life, a belief in one’s self, about the boundless opportunities that need to be pinpointed, accessed, and properly used to secure our goals’ said Oleg Deripaska commenting on the lecture. ‘I hope that the dialogue we are pursuing within this Forum will bring new brave and bold ideas and daring projects to life. Thanks to new initiatives we will be able to solve essential social, economic, environmental and humanitarian issues which are now on the agenda, to improve the life quality in entire cities and countries’, he stated.

The lecture of Mr. Deripaska is the first part of the five year cooperation programme between RUSAL and HKUST. The UC RUSAL President’s Forum will host lectures of internationally acclaimed political leaders, businessmen, professors and scientists. Student exchanges between HKUST and leading Russian universities also form an integral part of cooperation programme. Another important project within the cooperation framework is joint research on the application of innovative technologies to the aluminium sector and a search for innovative solutions to expand the use of aluminium in construction.

The hour-long lection is due to take place on 21 September 2010 at 2:30 pm Hong Kong time (10:30 Moscow time). A live webcast and replay of the event is available on the UC RUSAL corporate web-site http://rusal.ru/en/forum.aspx. You can also post your questions to Mr. Deripaska, which he will answer during the broadcast or straight afterwards.