PhosAgro Supports World Chess Championships for the Third Time

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.