The Board of Directors of Uralkali has accepted resignation of Maxim Shirokov from the post of President of the Company because of a transfer to another job. M. Shirokov took this decision for personal reasons.

From early 2002, the Company has passed through several important stages in its development. It organized an independent sales and marketing system and greatly improved the quality of products. By streamlining its internal economics the Company was able to cut down production costs and optimize the logistics. As a result, towards the end of 2003, the demand for Uralkali's products on the world markets substantially increased. It became obvious that the available capacities of the Company were insufficient to turn out the quantity of products demanded by the users. A long-term program was developed for building up the production. The implementation of this program will result in a considerable growth of Uralkali's capacities within several years. This costly program required attraction of large investments.

The Board of Directors of the Company tasked Maxim Shirokov with studying how much the world financial structures were keen to cooperate with Uralkali. The contacts established with some investment banks and measures taken to prepare Uralkali's entry into the world stock markets have shown that the Company is of great interest for investors. The successful work on raising the appeal of the Company for the users has, at the same time, made Uralkali attractive for the world financial institutions. As of to-day, the Company has already received several interesting investment proposals.

Thus, Maxim Shirokov has successfully dealt with the strategic task of bringing Uralkali to the world financial markets. The Board of Directors of Uralkali thanked M. Shirokov for his fruitful work and wished him successes at his new job.