Transneft under fire

The pipeline company's leaders are used to doing things their way, but a new shareholder, who has Kremlin-backing, sees things differently and wants changes

Transneft, Russia's pipeline infrastructure monopoly, is under pressure to open up its shareholder base and ditch its appalling reputation in the area of corporate governance. The long-overdue overhaul is being spearheaded by Kirill Dmitriev, the chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), the Kremlin-controlled sovereign wealth vehicle. Dmitriev was parachuted on to the Transneft board in July after the RDIF-related vehicles took a combined stake of almost 2% in Transneft, via a purchase of preferred shares. Of this stake, RDIF directly owns 0.43%, while the Russia-China Investment Fund, which is a co-funding vehicle for RDIF and China's state-owned China Investment Corpor