| YUKOS transferred 57% of the shares of the Siberian company to their former owners Millhouse Capital, which manages Roman Abramovich's assets, announced last night that a controlling stake (57%) of Sibneft shares had been returned to it. Until yesterday, these securities were listed on the balance sheet of YUKOS, with which it tried to merge last year. Now the holdings just have to agree that YUKOS will return another 35% of its shares in Sibneft to Abramovich’s structures in exchange for $3 billion and 9% of YUKOS shares, and then the deal to “divorce” the companies will be completed. And YUKOS will have a good reserve to pay off tax claims from the state.
Sibneft was part of the YUKOS structure only formally. In fact, both its financial and production flows were separated from Mikhail Khodorkovsky's company, and Sibneft's management, headed by Evgeniy Shvidler, reported exclusively to Mr. Abramovich.
A month ago, the Yukos board approved (on the third attempt) the decision to return 57% of Sibneft shares. However, these papers have been under arrest for several months, imposed by bailiffs on YUKOS assets, and this has significantly complicated the procedure. However, the owners of Sibneft somehow managed to solve this problem. As the head of the press service of the Siberian company, Alexey Firsov, said yesterday, “a legal mechanism was found,” but he refused to explain its details, adding only that the package is now “on the balance sheet of the company that was the previous owner.” A YUKOS representative also confirmed that the transfer of the asset took place: “YUKOS today actually instructed Deutsche Bank (nominal shareholder - Ed. ) to transfer this stake to the former main shareholders of Sibneft.” As far as we know, this transfer has already been completed.”
However, this “reverse” transaction is still far from being fully completed. After all, so far only its first stage has been completed, associated with the issue of an additional issue of Yukos shares (17% of the shares of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s company were exchanged for 57% of the shares of Roman Abramovich’s company). The next stage is more complex (Sibneft shareholders will have to regain 15% of its shares, giving YUKOS 9% of its shares in return, and also buy out the remaining 20% of Sibneft shares from YUKOS for $3 billion). At a meeting of the board of directors at the end of September, YUKOS approved this “divorce” of the companies. “We are not against a “divorce” if everyone remains with the acquired property,” said the chairman of the council, Viktor Gerashchenko, at the same time. - We can delay the transfer (57% of shares. - Ed. ) for two months, but since the people from Sibneft promise us some help in negotiations with the authorities and will provide us with time that we can exist in peace, why wait two month?
What kind of assistance Mr. Abramovich's team will provide to YUKOS remains unclear. Although, in any case, it can be stated that in recent days the “activity” of some authorities in relation to the company has decreased. In particular, the Ministry of Natural Resources promised not to rush to revoke the licenses of Yukos's main subsidiary, Yuganskneftegaz, and the bailiffs are no longer preventing the company from paying off its tax debt to the state for 2000. And only the Federal Tax Service continues to count arrears for previous years, and recently presented large-scale claims - $ 950 million - for the payment of taxes for 2002 to Yuganskneftegaz. Denis REBROV, Nikolay GORELOV |
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