By Peter Hobson
LONDON (Reuters) - Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin's Cyprus-based firm Whiteleave, aluminium giant Rusal (HK:0486) and Roman Abramovich's Crispian have agreed to delay a sale of a 2 percent stake in Norilsk Nickel (MM:GMKN) by Abramovich to Potanin, a lawyer for Whiteleave said.
Chelsea soccer club owner Abramovich's Cyprus-based Crispian on Tuesday sought a London court's permission to sell the stake, a move Rusal is trying to block.
The ownership dispute is part of a long-running battle for control of Nornickel, a $33 billion mining company which competes with Brazil's Vale SA
The parties in the dispute have agreed to delay the sale until after another court hearing on March 8-9, Daniel Toledano, the lawyer for Whiteleave, told the London court on Tuesday.
"We do have essentially an agreed order," he said.
Potanin had offered to buy a 4 percent stake in Nornickel from Abramovich for $1.5 billion. But Rusal (HK:0486), which is controlled by billionaire Oleg Deripaska and also owns a stake in the mining group, is seeking a court injunction to block the deal.
An earlier agreement involving Potanin, who owns a 30.4 percent stake in Nornickel, and Rusal, which holds 27.8 percent, allowed them to share Abramovich's stake on a pro rata basis if they both wanted to buy it.
Abramovich stepped up as a "white knight" minority shareholder to act as a buffer between Potanin and Deripaska in 2012, but a five-year lock-up period, during which they could not sell most of their Nornickel stakes, ended in late 2017.
Abramovich and his partners hold a 6.3 percent stake in Nornickel, of which 4.2 percent is owned via Crispian.