MOSCOW, November 30, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --
PhosAgro is to becomes an official strategic partner of the 2018
World Chess Championships, which will take place in London on 8-29 November. The Company will also
support the Candidates Tournament in Berlin (Germany) on 9-29 March
2018. In May this year, PhosAgro was an official sponsor for
the selection tournament of the Chess Grand Prix, which took place
in Moscow as part of the 2017-18
Championships.
The partnership between PhosAgro, one of the world's leading
phosphate-based fertilizer producers, and World Chess by Agon
Limited, holder of the commercial rights to organise championship
tournaments all around the world on behalf of the World Chess
Federation championships (FIDE), was announced on 29 November 2017 in London during a ceremony to announce the 2018
World Chess Championships.
The event was attended by the Deputy Chairman of the Board of
Directors of PhosAgro Andrey G. Guryev, CEO of PhosAgro, member of
the Board of Trustees of the Russian Chess Federation (RCF) Andrey
A. Guryev, Deputy President of FIDE Georgios Makropoulos, current
world chess champion Magnus Carlsen,
former UK Finance Minister and editor of the London Evening
Standard George Osborne, and the head of World Chess Ilya
Merenzon.
Eight chess players from five different countries, including
three Russians, will compete for victory at the tournament, and the
right to play for the chess crown, including the Russian runner-up
at the World Championships, Sergey Karjakin and fellow Russian
chess player Vladimir Kramnik; the
finalists from the 2017 World Cup, Armenian Levon Aronian and
Chinese Ding Liren; Americans Fabiano
Caruana and Wesley So, who are holders of the best FIDE
rating for 2017, as well as Azerbaijani Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and
Russian Alexander Grischuk, whose
participation in the Candidates Tournament were confirmed following
the FIDE Grand Prix in Palma de
Mallorca (Spain).
PhosAgro CEO and member of the Board of Trustees of the Russian
Chess Federation Andrey Guryev said: "The philosophy of PhosAgro
and our approach to doing business are in many respects consistent
with the game of Chess. At the heart of our work is strategic
thinking, the desire to calculate all moves in advance and be one
step ahead of our competitors. This approach is reflected in our
operating and financial results.
"Our company has been the General Partner of the Russian Chess
Federation since 2010. We are also a strategic partner of the
Russian grandmaster Sergey Karjakin. It has become a tradition for
us to support tournaments and matches for the World Chess
Championship that are held in Russia such as Sochi 2014. We also support
matches in which Russian Grandmasters played such as New York 2016,
where Sergey Karjakin delivered a genuinely exciting performance.
We sponsored the Grand Prix in Moscow and will support the forthcoming
Candidates Tournament in March 2018,
where three Russian grandmasters will be among the contenders, as
well as the final contest of this chess season, the World
Championship Match.
"Through our extensive support of the sport of chess we hope to
encourage children and adults to sit at the chess board and test
out their abilities at this most 'intellectual' and traditionally
Russian sport. I will not deny that I strongly hope that the
challenger to Magnus Carlsen in the
final of the chess championship will be a Russian player and our
country will again have a chance to regain the chess crown."
"We are happy to continue our partnership with PhosAgro. The
Company supports our mission to make chess the most popular sport
in the 'era of smartphones,' and we are already seeing the results:
after the World Championship in New
York chess gained huge popularity in Russia and around the world. Andrey Guryev,
the CEO of PhosAgro, awarded the World Champion prize to
Magnus Carlsen in New York, and we are very happy that he will
participate in the awards ceremony of the world champion in
London in 2018," said the head of
World Chess Ilya Merenzon.
PhosAgro (www.phosagro.ru) is one of the world's leading
vertically integrated phosphate-based fertilizer producers in terms
of production volumes of phosphate-based fertilizers and high-grade
phosphate rock with a P2O5 content of not
less than 37% (according to IFA, Fertecon and CRU).
The Company is the largest phosphate-based fertilizer producer
in Europe, the largest producer of
high-grade phosphate rock (with a P2O5
content of not less than 37%) worldwide and the third largest
MAP/DAP producer in the world, according to IFA. PhosAgro is also
one of the leading producers of feed phosphates (MCP) in
Europe, and the only producer in
Russia. PhosAgro is Russia's only producer of nepheline
concentrate.
PhosAgro's main products include phosphate rock, over 35 grades
of fertilizers, feed phosphates, ammonia, and sodium
tripolyphosphate, which are used by customers in 100 countries
spanning all of the world's inhabited continents. The Company's
priority markets outside of Russia
and the CIS are Latin America,
Europe and Asia.
PhosAgro's shares are traded on the Moscow Exchange, and global
depositary receipts ("GDRs") for shares trade on the London Stock
Exchange (under the ticker PHOR). Since 1
June 2016, the Company's GDRs have been included in the MSCI
Russia and MSCI Emerging Markets indexes.
SOURCE PhosAgro