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Alexey Miller will vote at the meeting of Gazprom shareholders with a controlling stake
Today, the next annual meeting of Gazprom shareholders will be held at the Gazprom central office on Nametkina Street in Moscow. For the first time since 2002, it will be held without the personal participation of the concern’s chairman of the board, Alexey Miller. Just like five years ago, the head of the company’s health failed. After an emergency hospitalization in early June and an operation to remove a kidney, the head of Gazprom is undergoing a rehabilitation course, and for now office workload is contraindicated for him. However, as a source in the company told Vremya Novostei, this will not prevent Mr. Miller from voting this time with blocks of shares owned by the state (together this is a controlling stake) and on the balance sheet of the Gazprom group (about 3. 5%), as well as shares whose owners have issued a voting power to the concern (as a rule, this is 25-30%). Over the past two years, this practice has helped to almost completely eliminate surprises when electing a second independent representative to the company's board of directors.Apparently, there won’t be any based on the results of today’s vote. With a high degree of probability, it can be assumed that all current members of the board of directors will be elected to its new composition. Currently, six state representatives sit on the council (First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Chairman of the Gazprom Board Alexey Miller, Minister of Industry and Energy Viktor Khristenko, Minister of Economic Development German Gref, Special Presidential Representative for International Energy Cooperation Igor Yusufov and former Minister of Property Relations Farit Gazizullin). The concern's management delegated the deputy chairmen of the board, Alexander Ananenkov and Mikhail Sereda, as well as the head of the department, Elena Karpel. The role of “independent” is the head of E.ON Ruhrgas (controls 6.5% of shares) Burkhard Bergmann and former co-owner of UFG Boris Fedorov. Both completely satisfy the management of the concern.
This year, foreign investors, due to the liberalization of the stock market and the legalization of securities that previously belonged to them through “gray schemes,” could seriously count on at least one truly independent director. Currently, 14% of shares are traded in the form of ADRs (at the beginning of last year there was no more than 4%), which, with consolidated voting, would give the required passing grade (8%). And in a favorable situation, it was quite possible to bring in two representatives of foreign minority shareholders. True, only the Vostok Nafta fund made an attempt to nominate an independent director to the board in January, when the lists were being formed. But Gazprom decided to play it safe and removed the director of the fund, Alexey Glazer, from the “race” due to allegedly incorrect paperwork. Thus, along with Mr. Fedorov, the list of “independents” included the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Alexander Shokhin, the rector of the Higher School of Economics, Evgeniy Yasin, as well as the presidents of the MICEX and the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange, Alexander Potemkin and Viktor Nikolaev. Having worked well with management, Mr. Fedorov has a clear advantage over them.
The results of the past year, which will be reported to shareholders today, will apparently be presented in warm colors - thanks to the harsh winter of 2005-2006 and the good gas price situation in Europe. Therefore, Andrei Kruglov, Deputy Chairman of the Board for Finance, with great pleasure yesterday presented the financial results of the concern’s work. According to him, sales revenue increased by 53% compared to 2005, exceeding 2.15 trillion rubles. True, in the international reports of the Gazprom group published last night, the figure of 56% growth appears, but such a discrepancy could hardly upset Mr. Kruglov. Net profit, according to reporting, more than doubled - 636 billion rubles. versus 316 billion in 2005 (excluding the 10.74% stake in Gazprom sold to the state last summer for $7.15 billion).
Mr. Kruglov was somewhat nervous about the capitalization of Gazprom, which last year made another impressive leap on the wave of liberalization of the stock market, but this year is showing negative dynamics compared to the Russian stock market. “The discussion of initiatives to increase the company’s tax burden had a certain negative impact on capitalization - we can see this from the market reaction,” said the financier of the monopoly, finding nothing better than to turn the arrows on Gazprom’s opponents in the government. And by the evening it became clear that the management of the concern, with the support of First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, could celebrate another lobbying victory. As a source close to the board of directors of Gazprom told the agencies, “the tax regime regarding gas production will remain unchanged, and options for economically justified changes in the mineral extraction tax rate will be discussed in the first quarter of 2008.” According to him, this decision was made following a series of meetings with Mr. Medvedev and a subsequent report to the Russian President. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and the head of the Ministry of Economic Development German Gref, as is known, sought a sharp increase in the mineral extraction tax rate due to the accelerated dynamics of domestic gas prices in the coming years.
The Gazprom Group, represented by Gazprombank, increased its stake in OJSC NTV Television Company from 69 to 100% in 2006, according to its consolidated financial statements according to international standards. During this period, the company increased its stake in NTV-Plus from 76 to 78%.