Russia's VTB seeks seat on Norilsk board-paper

MOSCOW, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Russian state bank VTB, which took a stake in Norilsk Nickel as collateral on a loan, will try to win a seat on the mining giant's board, Vedomosti newspaper reported on Monday.

The newspaper said a board seat for VTB was a new condition on a $3.2 billion loan to Norilsk's main owner, Vladimir Potanin, citing a source close to Potanin and the deputy chief executive of the bank, Vasily Titov.

Potanin is in negotiations with the bank on restructuring the loan, the report said.

Norilsk board candidacies are to be finalised by the end of the month, it said.

The government has insisted it will not use collateralised assets to increase long term control of the economy, though newspapers have reported proposals by Norilsk owners to cede stakes to the government.

Kremlin deal-broker Alexander Voloshin, chief of staff to late President Boris Yeltsin, became chairman of Norilsk last month after another major shareholder, Oleg Deripaska, put his 25 percent stake in Norilsk up as collateral on a $4.5 billion loan from state bank VEB.

VTB's chief financial officer said last week that the bank would reject any offers by corporate borrowers seeking to convert their debt into equity that would be held by the state-owned bank.

Chief Financial Officer Nikolai Tsekhomsky did not specify which companies were offering shares for their debt and said the talk of a conversion was newspaper speculation.

Russian newspapers said last week that Oleg Deripaska, who was Russia's richest man in last year's Forbes list, had offered to exchange $6 billion worth of debt to state structures for preferred shares in his RUSAL aluminium giant.

Kommersant newspaper said Deripaska owed the $6 billion to state banks VEB, Sberbank and VTB, and were secured by Rusal plants and Deripaska's 25 percent stake in Norilsk Nickel.

A spokeswoman for RUSAL declined to comment on the report.

Deripaska and Norilsk Nickel's main owner, Vladimir Potanin, have proposed pooling their asserts with several other Russian metals and mining groups to create a rival to the world's top miners to be part owned by the Kremlin, which would also wipe out their debts.

(Reporting by Melissa Akin; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) Keywords: NORILSK/VTB ([e-mail]; [phone]) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.