If successful, the takeover would create an aluminum giant with more than $5 billion in sales and leading positions in virtually every segment of the industry.

After a year of increasingly hostile negotiations, Prokhorov sold his share in Norilsk to a third oligarch for a stake in an aluminum giant and about $7 billion in cash.

Alcan, the Canadian aluminum giant, surprised investors yesterday by renewing a bid it made in 1999 to take over Pechiney of France.

His keeper of the treasury, Paul O'Neill, made his fortune in the decidedly old economy, at Alcoa, the Pittsburgh-based aluminum giant and component of the Dow Jones industrial average.

Aluminium is so spelled outside North America (except by the Canadian aluminum giant, Alcan Aluminium ).

He set out to shatter traditions and overthrow established policies that he felt had lost touch with the reality he knew as the chief executive of Alcoa, the aluminum giant.

Alcoa, the aluminum giant, has the look, as does the BIC Corporation.

During his 12-year tenure as chief executive officer of Alcoa, the aluminum giant based in Pittsburgh, the understated Mr. O'Neill was a highly regarded executive.

Alcan Aluminium Ltd., the Montreal-based aluminum giant, said yesterday that it had named David Morton, president and chief operating officer, to succeed David M. Culver as chairman and chief executive.

But as his critics had been telling Mr. O'Neill for weeks, there are few matters involving Treasury that are not relevant in some way to the aluminum giant.