Dear All, investors, jornalists, politicians,

We, the minority shareholders of Norilsk Nickel, would like to share our expeirence of the buy back organized by Norilsk Nickel and operated by Computershare, alledgedly one of the most professional firms in the world.

On the 28th of September, 2011, Norilsk Nickel, one of the largest mining companies in the world, announced its intention to buy back its share at $306 per share at the time when the share was worth just $210. Apparently, this assumed huge premium if the buy back was completed and a lot of shareholders decided to participate in this program. For minority shareholders holding less than 100 shares of the company the offer was even sweeter as the company announced that it would buy all the shares and not just pro-rata portion as it was going to do for institutional investors. We are not going to ask why this was done but one of the main reasons seems to be the desire of Mr. Potanin to get support of numerous minority shareholders in case Mr. Deripaska would like to stop the buy back.

Computershare, one of the biggest registrars in the world, was appointed to handle the applications from all investors in Russia. As it turned out, the way the application process was handled was difficult to imagine even for people who lived in the USSR. In the age of electronic technologies, Computershare requred every shareholder to come to several offices of Computershare in Russia to apply to participate in the buyback. Very quickly there were big queues around each Computershare office in Russia. People were fighthing to enter the office. Soon, people organized themselves and started to produce paper lists. As of the 27th of October, the list has more than 4000 people in it and only around 2000 people were accepted. Clearly, taking into account the speed of acceptance only 200 people will be accepted by Computershare tomorrow. This means almost 2000 people will be left without the right to participate in the buy back.

When there is a deficit of something, the black market emerges. There are several facts which are confirmed by all the people standing in the queues at Computershare. First, brokers (Finam, Alfa, Uralsib) quickly realized that they can make a lot of money from the process. Alfa bank announced on its web-page that the profit from the buy back is immense and that it would help for apply for the buy back for 30 thousand roubles ($1 thousand). The way it was done is noteable. All brokers paid to Computershare for the access by cash, while all poor people had to wait for hours in the freezing weather in the street.
Second, some smart people started to sign in the lists and then started to sell their place in the queue. The corruption is everywhere. Apparently, people at Computershare were interested to make the process as slow as possible to increase the queue and get rich by letting people who were prepared to pay.

The story is very pity because there are loud announcements of the Russian government to create a Financial Center in Russia. What Financial Center can be created if even the buy back of one of the largest public companies in Russia is treated this way. There is no technology behind the buy back, there is corruption in the organization which has international presence (Computershare).

Tomorrow is the last day when the applications can be made and there are a lot of people who will be fighting to participate. Some people might get killed.

We, minority shareholders of Norilsk Nickel, hope that the international newspapers, magazines, politicians will be able to influence Computershare, Norilsk Nickel, Russian Government to pay more attention to how minority shareholders are treated in Russia.

More information can be get at www.nnbuyback.narod.ru.

Thank you very much,

Minority Shareholders of Norilsk Nickel.