Nicosia, Cyprus - December 27, 2012, Nicosia, Cyprus - Urals Energy, an exploration and production company, announced that Leonid Dyachenko stands down as executive chairman and remains as an executive director.
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The company also announced that Andrew Shrager, who held the position of Chairman with Urals Energy NV prior to the Company’s IPO in 2005, returns to take up the position of non-executive chairman; and Stephen Buscher, who held the position of CFO at Urals Energy between 2005 and 2007, also returns to the Board as a non-executive director. Torbjörn Ranta, also joins the Board as a non-executive director.
Mr. Shrager, who has successfully led Urals Energy as its Executive Chairman since 2009 and has held a number of positions since the Company listed in 2005, is a private investor with a wealth of experience in investment banking.
Some of Mr. Shrager's main roles include senior adviser at Renaissance Capital (emerging markets); senior advisor to Merrill Lynch (Energy & Power group throughout Russia and Central Europe), especially the British Petroleum TNK acquisition; director of corporate finance at Lazard Brothers, where he advised both the Central Electricity Generating Board on its privatisation and National Power on its IPO.
Between 2001 and 2012 Mr. Shrager was a director of Utilyx, one of the UK’s leading specialists in energy and carbon, and between 2007 and 2010, he was a director of GeoDynamics Research. Since 2012, Andrew has held the position of CEO at GeoDynamics Worldwide, an international oil service and investment company.
Mr. Buscher has extensive financial experience, particularly in Russia, where he worked in the financial sector and subsequently the oil business for over twnety years. He acted as the Co-head of the Moscow office for Lazard Freres and Merrill Lynch, where he was overall relationship manager for CIS oil businesses.
Mr. Buscher also founded and co-managed Eurasia Capital Partners, a private M&A advisory boutique with offices in Moscow and London before entering the oil and gas business. He graduated from Connecticut College in 1983. He also received a diploma from the London School of Economics in 1987 and a Masters in Business Administration from Yale University in 1991.
Mr. Buscher held the position of Chief Financial Officer when Urals Energy successfully listed on AIM in 2005, a position he held until August 2007. He then took up the Chief Financial Officer role at Terralliance Technologies in 2007, an oil and gas exploration company privately owned by Goldman Sachs and Kleiner Perkins.
Mr. Buscher has recently been with the investment company Sistema as Executive Vice President investment strategy, and secondly as the Chief Executive Officer of Navitas Global Resources, the foreign project and exploration division and wholly-owned subsidiary of RussNeft.
Mr. Ranta has been actively involved in various Russian business projects since the mid 1990s. He has during this period been the CEO of a number of publicly listed natural resources companies such as Vostok Nafta Investment Ltd, Vostok Oil Ltd, Central Asia Gold AB and Malka Oil AB. He also represented North Atlantic Natural Resources AB between 1998 to 2001 as a Board Member of the Swedish exploration and mining company, the Lundin Group.
Mr. Ranta graduated from Stockholm School of Economics with a degree in Business Administration and Economics. He also worked for a year in 1982 at the Swedish Embassy in Moscow as a member of the consular section. ■