| The Board of Directors of Gazprom is today considering the financial plan of the monopoly, taking into account the merger with Rosneft The meeting of the board of directors of Gazprom, scheduled to begin today at three o'clock in the afternoon, may not take place. The deal to take over Rosneft is not yet on the agenda, but it does include the issue of adopting the budget and investment program of the concern, which, as many believed, should have included parameters related to the merger of Rosneft (or, conversely, not included, which would indicate a failure of the deal). The fact is that the head of the company and deputy chairman of the board, Alexey Miller, unexpectedly flew off yesterday on another business trip abroad - to Iran. The Gazprom press service was unable to say whether he would be able to return by the appointed time. It is obvious that without his participation it will not take place. One way or another, Mr. Miller would hardly risk an event that was supposed to clarify the fate of Gazprom’s takeover of Rosneft for the sake of Iran, which is not the main business partner of the concern. On the other hand, it is possible that having not yet received the final mandate to implement the transaction, which is the subject of active speculation, the head of Gazprom had good reasons to gracefully postpone the meeting of the board of directors. As you know, the other day the head of Gazprom announced that the mechanism for the takeover of Rosneft is already ready and will soon be implemented. Previously, the concern's management promised that the deal would take place before the end of January.
Another intrigue around Gazprom's budget for this year flared up in the middle of yesterday. Interfax, citing an unnamed source, reported that the budget issue was removed from the agenda of the board of directors meeting and will be considered after the merger with Rosneft takes place. “Given that the completion of integration (Gazprom and Rosneft - Ed. ) is expected in March 2005, it is planned to postpone consideration of this issue to the end of March of this year,” said the agency’s interlocutor.
The Gazprom press service immediately responded to the words of the anonymous source. “The merger of Rosneft is completely ready and can be carried out in the near future,” the concern said in a special statement. -- The draft investment program and budget of OAO Gazprom for 2005 have been prepared and submitted for consideration by the Government of the Russian Federation and the Board of Directors of OAO Gazprom. These documents represent programs of both the parent company (OJSC Gazprom) and its subsidiaries, including OJSC NK Rosneft.
A company representative also said that these documents were approved by the Gazprom board in absentia. According to him, submitting investment plans of the main subsidiaries to the board of directors for consideration is not a mandatory procedure, but has already become a tradition at Gazprom. At the same time, he could not clarify on the basis of which Rosneft was listed as a “subsidiary” of the concern. He also refused to name the parameters of the new investment program, specifying only that they differ from those adopted before the Yuganskneftegaz auction. True, a source close to the board of directors of Gazprom told Vremya Novostei that the company’s management this time planned a little more than 212 billion rubles in investments.
The latest versions of the budget and investment program approved by the Gazprom board, as is known, envisaged the purchase of Yuganskneftegaz by the concern. The intention to spend $9-10 billion on the Yukos subsidiary was supported by changes to the monopoly’s investment plan. Although the total amount of Gazprom's investment program was increased from 262 billion rubles. up to 300 billion rubles, the concern actually planned to spend about 160 billion rubles on business development. (147 billion rubles for capital investments and 10 billion for long-term financial investments). The remaining 150.6 billion rubles. it was supposed to be used to refinance a short-term loan from a consortium of Western banks for the purchase of Yuganskneftegaz. In addition, the free cash flows of Rosneft (28 billion rubles) and Yugansk itself (56 billion rubles) were supposed to be used to repay the loan.
In December, the Gazprom board of directors did not even consider this plan, since, by decision of an American court, the concern was removed from the auction participants. And a little later it turned out that the owner of the buyer of Yugansk, the Baikalfinance Group company, turned out to be Rosneft, which is almost three times smaller than its new acquisition. This put the deal to exchange 12% of Gazprom shares for Rosneft into question. Alexey GRIVACHS |
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