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Rosneft IPO scheduled for late July: Gref
AFP
MOSCOW
Petroleumworld.com 06 13 06An initial public offer for shares in the Russian oil group Rosneft will take place in the second half of July, news agencies said Monday, quoting German Gref, Russia's minister for economic development and trade.
According to one report, the highly-anticipated IPO could be worth up to 14 billion dollars, which would make it the third largest listing in history.
In response to a question on when the operation would take place, Gref said: "In July, but we won't manage it before the (G8) summit" on July 15-17 in Saint Petersburg.
Though he declined to set a definitive timeframe, the minister identified August 1 as the deadline for the listing of shares in London and Moscow.
"It won't be possible later," he said.
Rosneft said Monday that the subscription period would last from June 26 to July 10, but declined to give details on how many shares would be offered and at what price.
Interfax-ANI quoted a source close to the matter however as saying that the minimum expected value of the operation was 14 billion dollars.
That would make it the third biggest ever, after one by the Japanese NTT Mobile in October 1998 worth 18 billion dollars and one by the Italian energy group Enel in November 1999 worth 16.6 billion according to the Thomson Financial agency.
Earlier this month, the Bank of China raised 11.2 billion dollars in another huge share listing in Hong Kong.
Rosneft, which is wholly-owned by the Russian state, said Monday that ordinary shares and global depositary receipts (GDRs) would be offered to international institutional investors outside Russia, and that ordinary shares would be offered to retail and institutional investors in the country.
The group is to be listed on the London Stock Exchange and Russia's two main stock markets.
Rosneft was a small company before it acquired Yuganskneftegaz, the main producing subsidiary of Yukos, in December 2004 to become the third-biggest Russian oil producer.
Yukos was dismantled through legal action aimed at recovering unpaid taxes, but Rosneft has been dogged by controversy since its acquired Yukos' key asset.
On Monday it posted a first-quarter profit of 802.0 million dollars (636.5 million euros), an increase of 10.8 percent from the comparable figure 12 months earlier.
Sales surged by 72.0 percent to 7.516 billion dollars.
The listing of Rosneft shares has met some opposition however, with F and C Asset Management, one of Britain's biggest investment groups, threatening to boycott the London flotation.
Karina Litvack, head of corporate governance and socially responsible investment at F and C, said in late April that the IPO raised serious questions of governance and legal risk.
"Investors should tread carefully when considering investing in Rosneft," she told the Financial Times. "The Russian legal regime is opaque and difficult to navigate.
We don't pretend to understand it and if we cannot understand something, we won't invest in it."
"Unless Rosneft can provide us with credible assurances that it has identified, and made adequate provisions for, any liabilities stemming from the acquisition of its Yuganskneftegaz assets, we won't be interested."
Rosneft has mandated the banks ABN Amro International, Rothschild, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley to handle the international subscriptions. In Russia, the issue is to be lead-managed by Sberbank.
AFP 12 1935 GMT 06 06
Copyright ©2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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