Moscow’s Ninth Arbitration & Appeals Court supported the ruling of Moscow Arbitration Court which refused to meet the claims of Maxi Group’s minority shareholder Nikolai Maksimov in November 2009. Maksimov was unhappy with the results of an auction where OAO NLMK bought shareholdings of Maxi Group’s daughter enterprises: Nizhneserginskiy metal goods plant (OAO NSMMZ), Uralvtorchermet, and Ural Precision Alloy Plant (ZAO UZPS).

The auction took place on June 25, 2009 when Maxi Group had to meet its bail bonds on the earlier loans. NLMK said it needed to buy the shares of OAO NSMMZ, Uralvtorchermet, and ZAO UZPS in order to make their asset management more effective.

As a matter of fact, this is not the first lawsuit involving Nikolai Maksimov and NLMK. Both parties accuse each other of failing to meet the terms of the agreement which sold Maxi Group to NLMK Group. For the time being, Nikolai Maksimov keeps losing most of the cases.