Alexei Mordashov

Building companies involves creating great wealth. If that means I am an oligarch, OK, it's fine. But if being an oligarch is about buying football clubs, it is not for me.

My wealth is reflected in the price of Severstal, and the number of shares I have in my possession doesn't have any impact on the company.

We appreciate size, but only if it is robust growth. Just to be big is not a target.

I don't have any opinions about Russians. There are celebrity persons in each country. Different people do different things.

Well... I graduated from the business school of Northumberland University in Newcastle.

The steel business is a local business. We do believe in the U.S. economy and would like to have a strong, balanced presence here.

In a literal sense, even a private company, of course, cannot do everything that it wants without some discussion with government. As a good corporate citizen, Severstal discussed the idea of a merger with Arcelor with the Russian government.

Regarding our links with the Russian government, Severstal is a private company with no government participation. We are answerable to our shareholders.

We believe that the business system only is the key to success. It's no miracle, only day-to-day work in the appropriate way.

The U.S. has done a great job improving productivity. We're making a lot more steel in Dearborn with fewer people. The unions have accepted much better work rules.

People were expecting Rouge to go bankrupt, so there was a lot of anxiety. The corporate culture problem was even worse than in Russia. And at the same time, the work rules were more difficult.

When we put $4 billion into the U.S. economy, they were OK with this. When we preserved jobs in Dearborn, or preserved jobs in Columbus, or preserved jobs in Pennsylvania, everyone was happy.