December 19, 2001

PRESS RELEASE

Investors named the winners of the program "Corporate Governance in Russia - 2001"

On December 19, 2001 the Investor Protection Association announced the results of its program "Corporate Governance in Russia - 2001", aimed at evaluating the quality of corporate governance of leading Russian enterprises.

The Program "Corporate Governance in Russia - 2001" covers various aspects of companies' activities, including investor relations, dividend policy, strategic planning, protection of minority shareholders, corporate transparency. The program's objective is to evaluate the corporate governance quality of leading Russian issuers. IPA members, 26 major institutional Russian and foreign investors, working on the Russian market, voted the nominations.

The first category, "Best Manager", included 4 nominees: Mikhail Khodorkovsky ("YUKOS"), Alexey Mordashev ("Severstal"), Taimuraz Bolloyev ("Baltika" Brewery), J. O. Lunder (Vympelcom). The Best Manager in 2001, in the opinion of investors, is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Chairman of the Executive Board of YUKOS.

Below are average scores, given to the winner in this nomination for specific corporate governance aspects (maximum score is 10):

Strategic direction Overall profitability Overall financial performance Dividend policy Overall management of the company Protection of minority shareholders' rights Quality and timeliness of financial reporting Corporate transparency

8,25 8,06 7,68 7,37 7,87 6,50 8,00 7,37

The nomination "Company with best corporate governance" included the following companies: YUKOS, Vympelcom, United Heavy Machinery and Lenenergo. "Vympelcom" was named the company with the best corporate governance.

"Vympelcom" was also named the company with best investor relations. In this nomination the following companies competed: RAO "UES of Russia", United Heavy Machinery, Norilsk Nickel and Vympelcom.

"YUKOS" was named the winner in three nominations of the program "Corporate Governance in Russia - 2001": "Company with best dividend policy", "Company with best web site" and "Company with most improved corporate governance in 2001".

Besides YUKOS, the nomination "Company with best dividend policy" included Sibneft, Permenergo and LUKOIL. LUKOIL, Sibneft and MTS were also nominated to the category "Company with best web site". RAO UES, Sibneft and Norilsk Nickel competed with YUKOS in the nomination Company with most improved corporate governance in 2001".

The last nomination of the program "Corporate governance in Russia - 2001" was "Company with worst corporate governance". In this nomination investors named the company, where they wanted to see most improvements of the corporate governance in the future. In 2001 "Sberbank" was named such company. In the opinion of investors, Sberbank should pay more attention to such areas as financial transparency, information disclosure and relations with minority shareholders, so that at the next annual award ceremony the company could seriously compete with today's winners in other nominations.

The Investor Protection Association will continue to monitor the activities of Russian enterprises next year, in order to introduce and enhance civilized corporate governance standards in Russia as a key factor of market economy development in this country.

What is good and what is bad, or how the awards reached their winners

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