Rosneft finds right minority shareholders – the state-owned company sells 10% of RN Holding’s shares

Rosneft has sold about 10% of RN Holding’s shares (it owns all Russian assets of BP-TNK) to anonymous investors for almost 100 billion rubles. Rosneft called the amount of the deal, which proved to be even less than price, offered to minority shareholders of RN Holding for buyback of their securities, “attractive”. But analysts think that the deal was to set “a market price” of RN Holding’s securities, which will help Rosneft to reason the share price within offer to other minority shareholders. Loyal minority shareholders will also allow Rosneft to avoid problems during approval of interested party transactions.

Rosneft has sold 9.989% of RN Holding’s shares to “persons that are not affiliated with the company” for 97 billion rubles, the oil company’s accounting for the third quarter reports. The RN Holding’s authorized capital is divided for 15 billion ordinary shares, thus Rosneft sold about 1.5 billion shares at the price of 64.7 rubles per 1 share. Yesterday, during the conference call, the Rosneft’s Vice President for Economics and Finance, Svyatoslav Slavinsky stated that the deal became “financial operation at a price, which was rather attractive for the company”. A source, who is close to Rosneft, specified to  Kommersant yesterday that the deal was concluded to pay the RN Holding’s debt.