OREANDA-NEWS. May 7, 2007.  Polyus Gold (Open Joint Stock Company, OJSC) is the leading gold producer in Russia and the only Russian company among the world’s largest gold producers.

Headquartered in Moscow, Polyus Gold’s operating mines and development/exploration projects are located in 5 major gold mining regions of Russia. Its gold production in 2006 totaled 37.8 tonnes (1 215 k oz).

Evgueni Ivanov, Polyus Gold CEO, tendered his resignation to the Board of Directors, to become effective from May 28th 2007. The motivation behind this decision is to enable him to head up a new project, which involves exploration and development of gold deposits held within OJSC Polyus Exploration.

Polyus Gold formed Polyus Exploration, a wholly owned subsidiary which will hold licenses for Polyus Gold's planned greenfield exploration projects, at the beginning of April. Alexei Osenmuk, former vice president for economics and finance at Polyus Gold, will be appointed as general director of Polyus Exploration.

Mikhail D. Prokhorov sets up Polyus Gold in 2005 on the base of Polyus, gained by Norilsk Nickel in 2002. The clean profit was 1.3 billion USD for the first six month in 2006. 25.5% stocks of Polyus Gold are appertained to Mikhail D. Prokhorov and Vladimir Potanin.