Russian aluminum giant Rusal, which was recently excluded from a U.S. sanctions list, is negotiating to reinsure its risks with Western companies, Natalia Karpova, deputy chairman of the board of the Russian National Reinsurance Company (RNRC), told reporters, according to Reuters.
On January 28, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration lifted sanctions on Rusal and other core assets of Kremlin-linked tycoon Oleg Deripaska. According to the news agency, the reinsurance talks show the company is now trying to return to normal operations.
Karpova said that Rusal, the world’s second-largest aluminum producer, is in talks with Western reinsurers to get them to once again share the aluminum company’s risks. She did not name any of the companies involved.
Rusal’s primary insurer is Ingosstrakh, one of Russia’s largest insurance companies, according to two sources familiar with the process. Ingosstrakh had been reinsuring those risks with Western reinsurance firms before the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on April 6 last year in response to what it called Russia’s “malign activities”.
RNRC Chief Executive Nikolai Galushin told Reuters last year that after April 6 his firm was forced to take on almost all the risks of a number of Russian industrial plants previously shared among Western reinsurers.
If Rusal persuades Western reinsurers to once again share Ingosstrakh’s risks, RNRC is ready to share 20 percent of that reinsurance with Western firms, Galushin said on Monday.
RNRC was set up by the Russian central bank chiefly to offer reinsurance to firms barred from using Western providers after sanctions were first imposed on Moscow in 2014.
