Summary
The Red Army, along with the Soviet Air Force and Fleet (Navy) controlled more destructive power than any other military machine in history, but this force was unable to give the (former) Soviet union control of the world, or even to preserve the Soviet union as a political structure. Today, a very small group of men operating as ethnic Russians, who we call the 'Oligarchs,' i.e., the controllers of great wealth, have transformed the mismanaged former Soviet mining, smelting, refining, and fabricating industries into a Russian natural resources empire with far greater potential reach than any Czar or Chairman of the Council of Ministers could have ever dreamed. One of them, Oleg Deripaska, around forty years old, has risen to the top recently.
Analysis
By clever manipulation of the privatization of the former Soviet-era state owned metals industries Oleg Deripaska managed to put himself in charge of the Russian aluminum industry, and to reinvent it as RUSAL.
He has also, just in the last year, bought 41% of the equity in Canada's Magna, arguably today the world's best and most profitable large ($25 billion plus in sales) auto parts maker. Magna even, in (Graz) Austria in a J/V with local vehicle maker Steyr, operates an assembly plant for hire, which today produces Jeeps, Chrysler Minivans, and cars for Mercedes for both the west and the east European markets. Magna also has a deal with Russia's AvtoVaz to modernize and install best practices management in that company's Togliattigrad works, which was built during the Soviet era to be the world's largest truck plant.
Deripaska has now moved to take control of Norilsk, Russia's largest producer of nickel, cobalt, and copper, and the world's largest producer of the key automotive emissions control metal, palladium. Norilsk also owns Stillwater Mining, in Stillwater, Montana, the largest and only producing palladium mine in the USA.
In the creation of RUSAL Deripaska brought in some foreign minority partners. The most important one was Switzerland's Glencore, which was founded by Marc Rich, who no longer participates in the company, but who left the company with a legacy of some of the cleverest metal and mineral trading strategies and traders in the world. Glencore today is one of America's largest lead and zinc miners, among other things.
So, Oleg Deripaska will be the individual with the largest personal control of aluminum, nickel, cobalt, palladium, and copper production in the world as well as a very large stake in the production and marketing of OEM automotive components, including cars and trucks themselves, made from those metals. In addition he will be far and away Europe's and Asia's largest owner of the production of gallium, germanium, tellurium, and selenium, upon which so much of modern electronics production depends.
Perhaps Russian resource nationalism will be exercised, with regard to strategic and critical metals, through Mr. Deripaska.
In any case it will not be possible for either heavy or electronics manufacturer's in Asia or Europe to operate without an accommodation with one or more of Mr. Deripaska's companies.
Move over Carlos Slim and Bill Gates there's a new man in town, and he looks like he's staying.
