His ONEXIM confirmed that the stake in Polyus Gold could be sold

Mikhail Prokhorov negotiates the sale of his stake in Polyus Gold worth $4 billion with two unnamed bidders, almost 20% each. The largest shareholder of Polyus, Nafta Moscow of Suleiman Kerimov, promises to help one of the possible buyers. According to experts, Mr. Kerimov is the most likely contender for the ONEXIM group’s stake in Polyus, but Nafta denies this.

Mikhail Prokhorov's ONEXIM Group, which owns a 37.78% stake in Polyus Gold, confirmed yesterday that it is conducting preliminary negotiations with two potential buyers of these shares of the gold mining company. Each buyer is interested in a stake of less than 20% of Polyus shares, ONEXIM clarifies in a statement. In turn, Nafta Moscow of Suleiman Kerimov, which owns 40.2% of Polyus, reported that it was negotiating with one of the potential buyers for financial “or other” assistance. Nafta insists that it is not one of these buyers, and the day before it announced that it was not considering purchasing Polyus shares from Mr. Prokhorov’s companies. The current market value of ONEXIM's share in Polyus is about $4 billion.

Forbes reported on Tuesday, citing sources in financial circles, that Mikhail Prokhorov is negotiating the sale of his stake in Polyus Gold with Suleiman Kerimov. According to the publication, Mr. Kerimov is negotiating with VTB to finance the transaction, and in the future he will try to merge the company with Polymetal - such negotiations, Forbes writes, already took place at the beginning of 2012, but were not successful. Representatives of ONEXIM, Nafta, Polyus Gold and VTB declined to comment. A Polymetal representative told Kommersant that “the company is not and has not participated in any negotiations.”

Analysts and market participants interviewed by Kommersant do not know with whom ONEXIM is negotiating the sale of Polyus shares. But one of Kommersant’s interlocutors notes that, based on the wording of Nafta’s official statements, “nothing prevents Mr. Kerimov from providing money to a potential buyer and then receiving it as a debt offset.”

BCS analyst Oleg Petropavlovsky does not see obvious contenders other than the structures of Suleiman Kerimov, Polymetal and, possibly, Roman Abramovich, the largest co-owner of Highland Gold (Mr. Abramovich’s representative declined to comment yesterday). “There is no operational synergy between the assets of Polymetal and Polyus, but there is financial synergy - for example, the united company will be able to participate in the announced auction for the development of Sukhoi Log (reserves are estimated at 64 million ounces of gold - Kommersant ),” the analyst notes.

Polyus Gold had plans to team up with one of the major gold mining companies to create a global top three player - so the company sought a premium listing in London. But the plans of the main shareholders still diverged: in an interview with Reuters at the beginning of 2012, the owner of ONEXIM said that he was inclined to merge with a large foreign company, while Suleiman Kerimov was counting on a merger with Polymetal.

Anatoly Dzhumailo

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