MMC Norilsk Nickel (“the Company”) today announced the results of review of the share buy-back applications filed by the shareholders pursuant to the decision of the Board of Directors on December 2, 2004.

On December 3, 2004 MMC Norilsk Nickel announced its intention to buy back from its shareholders of up to 12,500,000 of the Company’s ordinary shares (which constitutes 5.8% of the Company’s total shares) at a price of 1,680 Rubles per share for the total amount of up to 21 billion Rubles. The Registrar of MMC Norilsk Nickel – ZAO “National Registration Company” – accepted the applications from the shareholders willing to participate in the buy-back program from December 15, 2004 until January 17, 2005.

For the given period the Registrar accepted 372 applications filed in accordance with offer requirements: institutional shareholders filed 207 applications and individual shareholders filed 165 applications. The total number of shares filed in the applications reached 59,761,360 shares: of which 57,965,450 shares came from the applications of the institutional shareholders and 1,795,910 shares came from the applications of the individual shareholders.

As the total number of shares tendered by the shareholders reached 59,761,360 shares and exceeded 12,500,000, the number of the shares to be purchased by the Company from a shareholder is calculated on proportional basis. For the calculation of the final number of shares to be purchased by the Company from a shareholder, the number of tendered shares in application should be multiplied by coefficient of 0.209165253267329. The coefficient is calculated as a result of the division of the total number of shares to be purchased by the Company from the shareholders (12,500,000) by the total number of shares tendered by the shareholders for buy-back (59,761,360).

The respective form with the final number of shares to be purchased by MMC Norilsk Nickel from a shareholder will be sent out to all shareholders that filed applications to the Registrar.

The shareholders that filed the applications for share buy-back or their representatives should visit ZAO “National Registration Company” until February 15, 2005 (expiration date for share purchase by the Company) and sign respective share-purchase agreements and transfer forms.
The payment for the shares will be effected in cash as contemplated by the share-purchase agreements, but not later than 30 days after the closing of share purchase period.