OGK-2 has come to terms with the market situation

The company does not yet intend to attract investor money

Generating company OGK-2, separated from RAO UES, announced yesterday that when placing an additional share issue it will be limited to the volume that it managed to sell to investors last Friday. This means that it will come to terms with the failure that befell it when entering the London Stock Exchange (OGK-2, by the way, was the first Russian generating company to try to enter a foreign exchange). As is known, the company planned to raise 42 billion rubles. ($1.66 billion) for the investment program. However, there was no demand for its securities, and in the end only 7 billion shares were placed (out of 12 billion prepared for this process) at a price of 16 cents. At the same time, Gazprom became the owner of 4 billion shares, or 11.6% of the authorized capital. This will be enough for the gas concern to gain control over OGK-2 next year, since it will receive about 40% of the shares as a result of an exchange of assets with shareholders of RAO UES of Russia. This circumstance explains the lack of interest in OGK-2 among strategic investors.

Currently, 80.9% of OGK-2 shares belong to RAO UES of Russia. Upon completion of the placement, his stake will be “diluted” to 62.3% of the shares. The head of the energy holding, Anatoly Chubais, as the main ideologist of the placement of securities on foreign sites on Friday, argued that, in his opinion, “we cannot miss” the opportunity to place Eurobonds that will be exchanged for the announced shares of OGK-2 (about 10% of the current capital and about 8% from capital after placing an additional issue of shares). However, the organizers of the placement - Deutsche Bank and Troika Dialog, according to a source in RAO, did not recommend doing this (apparently, experts believe, due to poor market conditions). As a result, Mr. Chubais's opinion was ignored: yesterday morning OGK-2 announced that it would not place bonds.

What the company will do with the issued but not placed shares is still unknown. Yesterday RAO categorically refused to say anything about this. A source close to the energy holding claims that it is too early to put an end to this story: RAO is still considering the possibility of placing these shares, because it needs to look somewhere for the missing $560 million for the investment program. The placement may occur when the situation on Western financial markets calms down somewhat, he believes.

However, it cannot be ruled out that such a position is intended to indicate to Gazprom that its stake may be “diluted.” In ongoing negotiations on long-term gas supplies to power plants, it seems quite understandable.

Nikolay GORELOV