Norilsk Nickel shareholders voted Tuesday to add a state representative to their 13-member board, a move they said was needed to help Russia's largest miner weather the economic crisis.

Former presidential chief of staff Alexander Voloshin, Norilsk's current chairman, was re-elected to the board, where he will be joined by Vasily Titov, deputy chairman of state-run VTB Group management board.

"Mr. Titov, a highly qualified professional, will work on the successful development of the company," Voloshin told reporters after the miner's annual shareholders meeting. He said he did not think that the state's influence on the company's decision-making would grow after Titov's arrival.

Titov declined to comment on his election during the day and after the shareholders meeting.

The board convened shortly after the shareholders met to re-elect Voloshin, an independent director, as chairman.

Voloshin was originally nominated to the board by state bank VEB, which received the right from Oleg Deripaska, whose RusAl holds a 25 percent stake in Norilsk. Deripaska used the stake as collateral for a $4.5 billion bailout loan disbursed by VEB last year.

VEB also bought up a 3.68 percent stake in Norilsk earlier this year.

The board will include two Deripaska representatives. RusAl minority owners also received seats, including one for Viktor Vekselberg's Renova Group and another for Mikhail Prokhorov's Onexim Group.

Vladimir Potanin's Interros holding, which also owns about 25 percent in Norilsk, received four seats. Alisher Usmanov's miner Metalloinvest, which owns about 4 percent, received one seat.

The VTB nomination was a condition for the restructuring of a $3 billion loan that Potanin took from the state bank last year against 16.8 percent of his Norilsk stake.

Shareholders considered three other state representatives Tuesday: VTB board member Valery Lukyanenko, VEB deputy chairman Anatoly Ballo and Igor Komarov, an adviser to Russian Technologies chief Sergei Chemezov.

The shareholders voted against paying a 2008 dividend -- the first time they've done so in nine years -- and approved a new charter, which tightened the access of the board members to the company's information.

"We have state secrets, which we have to guard," Norilsk CEO Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, a former KGB officer who joined the company in August, said as he and Voloshin talked to reporters after the board meeting.

Strzhalkovsky approached reporters before the chairman, joking that "he's telling his family that he has been elected," after which Voloshin entered the room.

Minority shareholders who attended the meeting said they supported the additional state participation in Norilsk.

"I voted for VEB and VTB representatives," Vadim Moskalenko, 66, who holds 50 Norilsk shares, said as he was leaving the state-owned President Hotel, where the meeting was held.

"It was all private investors, like Mikhail Prokhorov [who sold his 25 percent stake in Norilsk to RusAl last year] and Oleg Deripaska, who stir up trouble. When there is a crisis out there, you need someone reliable in the management of the company, like the state."

Five other shareholders interviewed by The Moscow Times said they also voted for the state representative.

But Moskalenko said he was against bonuses for the company's managers. "We understand that there is a crisis out there, but why do the independent directors get their dozens of thousands of dollars?"

Norilsk's four independent directors receive $62,500 per quarter.