Nice formality

Gazprom Neft received permission to purchase 100% of Sibir Energy

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has approved the purchase by Gazprom Neft of 100% of the shares of Sibir Energy. In the event of such a transaction, the company will be obliged to comply with the requirements of the FAS. However, this permission is only a formality: Gazprom Neft contacted the service at the end of September, when it really intended to become the sole owner of the British company. But the Moscow authorities did not want to give up their share.

Gazprom Neft currently owns 55.65% of Sibir Energy. According to some reports, she has another 23.35% of the shares as collateral, around which businessmen Ruslan Baysarov and Shalva Chigirinsky are arguing in a London court. The other major shareholder of the company is the Moscow government, owning 18.9% of the shares.

Before submitting an application to the FAS, Gazprom Neft signed a memorandum with the Moscow government on the management of Sibir Energy. The details of this document were not disclosed. Then the head of the complex of property and land relations in the capital, Vladimir Silkin, unexpectedly announced that in 2010, Moscow’s share in Sibir Energy could be increased to a controlling one, which supposedly has already been agreed upon with Gazprom Neft. The Moscow government even reported that 4.5 billion rubles had already been included in the budget. to buy shares. At the same time, the company has repeatedly made it clear that they are not going to share shares with anyone.

Gazprom Neft called the permission received from the FAS a formality, because in September the final parameters of the transaction were not yet known, so the company decided to play it safe. According to experts, at that time Gazprom Neft really intended to buy the entire company. Now the management of Sibir Energy, as explained by Gazprom Neft, occurs in accordance with the memorandum signed last fall with the Moscow government, and there are no new negotiations with the city authorities about any transactions. Experts still call the plans of capital officials to increase the stake in Sibir Energy “very dubious.” Gazprom Neft is currently consolidating with Sibir Energy. There is no point in selling shares to the Moscow government. Although the desire of the mayor’s office to increase control over the company, one of the main assets of which is the Moscow Refinery, is understandable,” believes Veles Capital analyst Dmitry Lyutyagin.

The main shareholder of the Moscow Refinery is Moscow NPZ Holdings BV, it owns 90.2% of the plant. This company is controlled on a parity basis by Gazprom Neft and Sibir Energy. After Gazprom Neft acquired shares of the British company, its effective ownership of the Moscow Refinery is 59.75%. In October, as part of personnel rotation, the shareholders replaced the plant's general director. The head of the Moscow Refinery, Alexander Meling, went to manage the Omsk Refinery of Gazprom Neft, whose director, Ildus Sarvarov, was in turn sent to Moscow.

Yesterday it became known about the election of a new board of directors of the Moscow Refinery at an extraordinary meeting of shareholders held on Tuesday. Gazprom Neft in the management of the plant will be represented by the head of the oil refining department Alexander Sannikov, the head of the economics and investment department of the logistics, refining and sales block Vladimir Konstantinov, the deputy general director for logistics, refining and sales Anatoly Cherner and the head of the legal affairs directorate Andrey Shutov. The Moscow government delegated to the board of directors Advisor to the Mayor of Moscow Sergei Golubkov, Deputy Head of the Property Department Igor Ignatov, Head of the Department of Science and Industrial Policy Evgeny Panteleev, as well as a member of the Board of Directors of Sibir Energy and Moscow NPZ Holdings BV Maxim Viktorov. The first deputy head of the Sibir Energy representative office, Oleg Ivanchenko, the MNGK vice-president for legal issues, Vadim Maklakov, and the representative of Sibir Energy, Alexander Povolotsky, left the board of directors of the Moscow Refinery.

Kirill MELNIKOV