Bins of the Motherland

Rosneft successfully completed its IPO

Rosneft is an instrument of the state and will always serve the achievement of Russia's political goals, and not the interests of shareholders. Is Rosneft ready to include this information in the issue prospectus?” asked billionaire George Soros from the pages of The Financial Times in April.

Despite the negative attitude of many Western investors towards this IPO, there were no less than those who bought Rosneft shares. This sale, the largest in Russian corporate history , brought in $10.6 billion. It is important that starting with Rosneft, initial public offerings of large companies began to be carried out primarily on the Russian stock market: approximately 750 million of the total amount were given to 114 thousand. citizens who were not afraid to part with at least 15 thousand rubles. -- this was the minimum bid price.

And although skeptics predicted a decline in the price of the oil company's shares after the end of the two-month period of support from the banks that organized the IPO, the price of securities increased significantly in almost six months - by 23.6%, while the RTS index grew by 24.8%. In 2007, two more “public” placements are expected - securities of VTB and Sberbank. The latter was the main organizer of the placement of Rosneft and at the same time pursued the goal, as the deputy chairman of his board Bella Zlatkis said, “to create technology”, “because in the future it (placement of shares of state-owned companies among the population. - Ed. ) is a good business.” For the state, by the way, the IPO of Rosneft was a really good business: it sold a small stake of 14.8% of shares, and with the proceeds it repaid a loan of $7.8 billion, which was necessary in 2005 for consolidation controlling stake in Gazprom.

Preparations for the Rosneft IPO were carried out actively, especially propaganda. Many middle- and high-income citizens believed Vladimir Putin, who himself has repeatedly spoken about the attractiveness of placing securities among the population. There were even queues at Sberbank. Moreover, it was mainly pensioners who were interested in the papers. And in the end, the goal was achieved: the state not only solved the problem of payments for Gazprom shares, but also thoroughly stirred up the interest of citizens in anticipation of the “public” placements of Sberbank and VTB.

Anna GORSHKOVA, Anna LANDER, Natalya ROMANOVA, Mikhail VOROBIEV, Nikolay GORELOV, Alexey GRIVACH, Andrey DENI