Vadim Saveliev

Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications

During 2009, Severstal took a major step forwards in its development, establishing its corporate mission, vision and values. These form the basis of our long-term strategy and are the starting point for the creation of a corporate culture. The launch of a new brand in 2009 supported these developments.

Why a new corporate culture? Our Company is developing rapidly. In 15 years we have grown from being a large regional enterprise to a leading national Company, and are now a leading international steel and mining Company. Our vision, brand and corporate culture need to develop alongside this transformation and reflect this growth.

Severstal derives competitive advantage from three important strengths: striving for excellence, the experience and dedication of our people, and our vertically integrated value chain. The philosophy of our new brand interconnects with our mission, which is to become leaders in value creation. Our slogan, Achieve more together, has an important role to inspire call to action, uniting everyone across Severstal.

Having set a direction for our development, we are establishing a new Severstal Business System, encompassing a number of strategic projects designed to bring our mission and vision to life. Each project is managed by a specific functional area of our operations and all of them are critical for achieving our goal of being an industry leader. Severstal Business System is based on our corporate values of safety, customer care, efficiency and agility, respect for employees and teamwork.

Having launched these projects in 2009, we are already seeing progress. Each project means changing existing business processes, looking at things from the standpoint of our values, and devising solutions to the challenges we face.

Cultural change is impossible without good internal communication, and we worked hard at this during 2009. Our intranet became a single conduit for informing our employees about our Company and its many developments. The chief executive and heads of divisions now regularly communicate with employees in each region by videoconferencing, and any employee can now ask the chief executive the most demanding of questions.

In summary, the work carried out in 2009 has laid the foundations for the future. In 2010 and the years ahead we will witness the development of a radically new Company. Three key words underpin our new brand: People, Excellence and Unity. They lay the basis for the success that we will achieve together in the future.