The Media: Gazprom, Rosneft and Russian Railways to be obliged to adopt a new corporate code.

On September 1st the RF Government intends to implement a new corporate governance code in prescriptive order into 13 major public joint-stock companies including Gazprom, Rosneft, Rostelecom, Aeroflot, Russian Railways, VTB and Sberbank, "the Kommersant" newspaper wrote on Tuesday. This will reduce the leverage of the direct government influence, as well as strengthen the rights of the minority shareholders.

The Code of Corporate Governance, approved in February, is designed to increase the responsibility of the board of directors to protect the minority shareholders from major shareholders fraud, to arrange the payment of remuneration of top managers and to strengthen the institution of independent directors in the state-owned companies.

"The government has started the development of the guidelines for board members of 13 state-owned companies, under which those will start work on the implementation of the provisions in the documents of JSC corporate governance code since September 1, 2014. This implies a shift to the formation of the Board of Directors in "Gazprom", Sberbank, "Rosneft" and Russian Railways, in which at least one third will be independent, in 2015" - the newspaper informed.