Alain J. P. Belda is a Spanish-Brazilian-American businessman who has been a managing director of Warburg Pincus since 2009.

[3] On October 6, 2005, in the paper EXAME in São Paulo, Brazil, there appeared an article by journalist Alexa Salomão, where Belda was quoted as saying Alcoa was paying Brazilians twice as much for energy for the corporation's Brazilian aluminum smelters, as it was paying Iceland's state-run energy firm Landsvirkjun: "...the agreed price — 30 dollars per megawatt-hour — was far from ideal.

"[4] When this news reached Icelandic media, on June 7, 2006, the reaction was negative from environmentalists opposed to the already controversial Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant, and others, as Icelandic citizens and other firms pay eight times that.

An Icelandic social-democratic member of parliament, Helgi Hjörvar, who is on the board of Landsvirkjun, challenged authorities to reveal the real price and thus "clear the air" surrounding the project—the dam and the smelter.

[citation needed] Citigroup Inc. and E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company and International Business Machines.