| Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein will set the price for Yuganskneftegaz The Ministry of Justice announced yesterday that it had reached an agreement on the assessment of OJSC Yuganskneftegaz with the investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW). The block of shares of the main oil-producing enterprise of the Yukos company will go up for sale after receiving an independent opinion on its value. And although events continue to develop according to the worst-case scenario for YUKOS, the announcement of the name of the appraiser, paradoxically, caused a significant increase in the shares of the oil company.
Trading in YUKOS on the MICEX at the end of yesterday was, according to established tradition, suspended until this morning. This time due to a sharp increase in the oil company's shares. They added 17.08% in price. The RTS showed a more modest result - plus 5.56%. Western stock exchanges reacted similarly.
The involvement of a well-known international investment bank in the assessment of the oil company's assets to be sold gave investors some confidence that Yuganskneftegaz would be transferred to a new owner at a fair price. Until now, there have been two extreme estimates of the value of the Yukos subsidiary. Both of them were expressed by the company's management. Thus, representatives of YUKOS claimed that government officials were hatching plans to sell Yuganskneftegaz to a state-owned entity essentially at the book value of its assets - for $1.75 billion. In this case, YUKOS, according to the company's chairman of the board Stephen Theede, would become bankrupt. According to YUKOS’s own estimates, based on the results of an international audit of Yuganskneftegaz’s oil reserves, the value of the subsidiary could not have been less than $30.4 billion. The opinions of third-party experts regarding the value of the company took into account the inevitable discount when selling such a large enterprise and fluctuated in the range from 10 to 20 billion dollars.
The appointment of DrKW as an appraiser obviously removes doubts about the sale of YUKOS assets at the book value of a near-state company. Russian authorities, who hired investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein for a pre-sale assessment of Yuganskneftegaz, hope to depoliticize the situation surrounding the Yukos case, Bob Forsman, managing director and head of the investment department of DrKW bank for Russia, told Reuters yesterday.
“The company will be assessed according to generally accepted international standards,” Mr. Forsman assured, however, according to Interfax-AIF, he did not specify how the cost of Yuganskneftegaz’s oil reserves would be taken into account. If the result obtained by DrKW “fits” into the range determined by experts, then the proceeds from the sale of Yuganskneftegaz will be quite sufficient to satisfy the tax claims that have already arisen. At the same time, other oil producing enterprises, Samaraneftegaz and Tomskneft, which provided 38% of the disgraced company’s oil production last year, will remain behind YUKOS. If you compare the price of YUKOS securities on the eve of the first arrest of its assets on July 19 and their price yesterday, you will find that the market has already prepared for the possible sale of the subsidiary. He deducted from the company's capitalization approximately 60% attributable to the largest oil producing enterprise. 3.8 dollars in RTS - this is the price of YUKOS without Yuganskneftegaz.
The choice of DrKW as an appraiser for Yuganskneftegaz can be explained not only by the authorities’ intention to avoid politics in the Yukos case, but also by the significant history of cooperation between the state and the investment bank. “It seems to us that this choice is explained by the fact that DrKW has extensive experience in the Russian market, in particular in the oil and gas sector,” DrKW representative Louise Beeson told Vremya Novostey. Indeed, the bank has been operating in Russia since 1994 and has taken part in major transactions carried out by the Ministry of Property, the Russian Federal Property Fund, the Moscow government, LUKOIL, MTS, Rosneft, Transneft, Tatneft, etc. But its cooperation with Gazprom is especially noteworthy " At the end of 2001, on behalf of the concern, DrKW began assessing the assets of the gas company's media holding, including the NTV television company. Gazprom then intended to get rid of non-core assets, but this process has not yet been completed.
Representatives of DrKW refuse to disclose the time frame and conditions of the joint project with the Ministry of Justice. Mr Forsman told Reuters only that the bank would carry out assessments "as long as necessary". However, according to current regulations, the Ministry of Justice has only two months to conduct an assessment of the seized assets. The countdown began on August 6, when YUKOS assets were re-arrested. True, the oil company can protest the results of DrKW's activities within ten days after their presentation. “The team that is working on the assessment of Yugansneftegaz,” Louise Beeson told Vremya Novostei, “includes experts from the London and Moscow offices of DrKW, about ten people in total, specializing in the oil and gas sector. In fact, they have already started work.” Igor POLISCHUK, Yuri VERETENNIKOV |
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