Yesterday, Dow Jones reported that Gazprom-affiliated

Yesterday, Dow Jones reported that Intergazprom-Invest Holding Rt., a company affiliated with Gazprom. (registered in Hungary) became the owner of 29.22% of the shares of the Hungarian manufacturer of ceramic tiles - Zalakeramia Rt. Details of this transaction have not been disclosed.
Intergazprom-Invest Holding owns 9.98% of the Gazprom-controlled Hungarian bank Altalanos Ertekforgalmi Bank (AEB), which previously owned about 21% of Zalakeramia shares. Representatives of Zalakeramia claim that the bank still retains its stake in the company, but the bank itself does not comment on this. Thus, Gazprom, through its structures, according to Zalakeramia, became the owner of a controlling stake in the enterprise. The head of the gas concern's press service, Igor Plotnikov, was unable to confirm this information yesterday, saying only that "Gazprom's investment program for this year does not include the acquisition of shares in the Hungarian tile manufacturer." Yesterday, the Hungarian petrochemical concern BorsodChem announced the impending sale by the Irish company Milford (affiliated with Gazprom) of a 29% stake in BorsodChem to the Austrian investment company Aurora Holding AG (AH). The Austrian company Vienna Capital Partners (VCP), the owner of AH, thus becomes the main shareholder of BorsodChem, having concentrated 88.23% of its shares. Let us recall that in 2000-2001, VCP and Milford intended to buy BorsodChem to incorporate it into AK SIBUR, but after a change in its management, these plans collapsed. It is likely that VCP will put the company's shares up for sale to a wide range of investors in the future. Having parted with the shares, Milford and Gazprom will lose the opportunity to manage the situation around BorsodChem, and the circle of potential buyers may include LUKOIL, the Hungarian oil and gas concern MOL and the Austrian OMV.
DENIS Kommersant-Skorobogatko, DMITRY Kommersant-BUTRIN

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 43 dated March 14, 2003, p. 16

Authors:

Dmitry Butrin

Gazprom is replacing chemistry with ceramics