The people are underpaid

Dividends on state -owned promotions are indignant at the minorityites at the end of last week, meetings of shareholders of two "folk" banks - Sberbank and VTB at once were held. The meetings brought the minority farmarly disappointment. At the VTB meeting, this resulted in open claims to the management of the bank.

Battle of dividends

The dissatisfaction of shareholders is primarily caused by dividends that banks promise them. So, VTB is ready to pay 50% of the bank’s net profit in the form of dividends. At the end of 2007, it amounted to 17.978 billion rubles, and, therefore, the bank will allocate about 9 billion rubles for all shareholders. Sberbank will direct a much smaller share from profit - only 10%. However, in absolute terms, it turns out to be larger than VTB: 11.67 billion rubles. Bankers believe that the amounts aimed at payments are quite adequate. In any case, the head of Sberbank German Gref said that the bank was not going to increase the share of dividends to profit.

In terms of the number of shares, it turns out that the owner of ordinary shares of Sberbank will receive a 51 penny of income for each action. And the owner of VTB papers is 0.00134 rubles per ordinary share. But, given that everyone who wanted to purchase Sberbank shares was supposed to pay for a minimum package of 89 thousand rubles, the minimum size of dividends per investor of Sberbank will be 510 rubles. The owner of the minimum VTB package (the “entrance ticket” cost 30 thousand rubles) will receive 295.59 rubles as dividends.

Recall that the third participant in the folk IPO, Rosneft, met with shareholders a few weeks ago. The oil corporation turned out to be the most generous to its minority. She sent 20 billion rubles to dividends. 1.6 rubles were accrued for each ordinary share. But such a figure also seemed to shareholders strongly low.

Battle for quotes

The second question that causes indignation among the participants of the folk IPO is the current market value of shares. But if Rosneft's shareholders can hardly complain about fate: by now, the company brought them 34% of the profit in rubles (or 56% in US dollars), then Sberbank shareholders have serious claims. The price, at which on February 20, 2007, the release of Sberbank was placed 89 rubles (taking into account the crushing of the shares of shares, which was carried out a little later). And now they are quoted at 76 rubles. Participants in the IPO VTB, held at the end of May last year, lost almost 40%during the appeal. Instead of 13.6 kopecks per share, only 8.2 kopecks can receive securities for them. True, analysts at the time of the placement of VTB shares warned that sale around the upper limit could play a cruel joke with the bank. Moreover, their forecasts could not yet take into account the fact that the crisis in world financial markets would finally drown the shares. Namely, such an explanation constantly sounds from the lips of the head of VTB Andrei Kostin. He does not cease to repeat that he himself is painfully experiencing a fall in shares, but the plans of the bank management in any way to improve the situation with quotes are not distributed. In turn, the bank’s minority sorcerers aggressively react to condolences, requiring various fantastic patterns like government interference or reverse shares at the price of their placement.

Everything for the people

In order to reassure the raging passions somewhat, the leaders of all three companies - the IPO participants decided to create some representative offices of the minoritarians under the rule. Andrei Kostin suggested thinking about creating the Committee on Interaction with Minorities in order to "better understand each other." Herman Gref also made the same idea. He said that the issue of creating a special structure at the Sberbank’s supervisory board is being discussed, which could convey to the minority shareholders the course of work on the bank's development strategy and receive wishes from minorityites in which direction to adjust it. He also added that those companies that do not respond to minority shareholders are usually not successful, especially when these minority are also customers.

And the chairman of the board of directors of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, in response to the proposal from the audience to create a committee of Minoritarias immediately spoke about specific ways to do this. He suggested to the minorityites to send their options: how such a committee should look and who should enter it. And then send all the candidates to each shareholder so that everyone will choose the most worthy.

06/29/2008 / Julia Lokshina, the material was published in the newspaper No. 119 dated 06.30.2008.