Yesterday, the absentee board of directors of Svyazinvest was supposed to be held, called to set a repeat date for the annual shareholders' meeting, but it did not take place. According to the deputy director of the information support department of Svyazinvest, Yulianna Sokolenko, the questionnaires from the state representatives did not arrive.

Initially, the annual meeting of Svyazinvest shareholders was scheduled for June 29, but did not take place due to disagreements between the departments whose representatives are on the board of directors of Svyazinvest. Rosimushchestvo demanded that all of Svyazinvest’s real profits – 177 million rubles – be paid in dividends. The company’s management agreed to pay only 55% of this amount – 90 million rubles. Representatives of the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications and the Ministry of Economic Development (MEDT) sided with the management. On June 30, MEDT submitted a draft directive to the government, which proposed that Svyazinvest pay dividends in the amount of 90 million rubles. At the same time, a protocol of disagreements with Rosimushchestvo was sent. However, as Andrei Sharonov, Deputy Head of MEDT, told journalists, the directive on profit distribution and the amount of dividends has not yet been signed.

As a result, two days before the board of directors, Rosimushchestvo sent a letter to the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications and the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, proposing to postpone the date of the board. As one of the departments that received the letter told Vedomosti, Rosimushchestvo considers it premature to hold the meeting before the government makes a decision on the distribution of the holding's profits and the payment of dividends. It was not possible to obtain comments from Rosimushchestvo yesterday.

Now the board of directors will meet only after the government approves the directive on dividends and profits of Svyazinvest. Sharonov does not know when this will happen. And Sokolenko adds that, according to the law, a new meeting of the board of directors cannot take place earlier than in two weeks. “It is unclear why the government is dragging its feet on approving the directive: this means that either there is a haggling over the size of dividends, or that the issue of privatizing Svyazinvest has not yet been fully resolved,” says Irina Lozhkina, an analyst at Prospect Investment Company. And Konstantin Chernyshev, a senior analyst at UralSib Financial Corporation, believes that this is “the usual internal departmental confusion” that is not related to the privatization of the holding.

Rosimushchestvo wants money