Norilsk Nickel announces new buyback
Norilsk Nickel has returned to practice of its shares buyback: in 2015, this company may spend up to $500 million for this. In 2010-2011, the buyback was one of the reasons of the hard conflict among the company’s shareholders. At this time, according to sources of the Kommersant, the owners of the key packages support the idea, but the market didn’t appreciate it.
In 2015, Norilsk Nickel plans to spend up to $500 million to repurchase its own shares from the market, the company reported yesterday. Based on the capitalization of Norilsk Nickel on the London Stock Exchange as of March the 31st, this amount will be enough to buy back approximately 1.8% of the shares (2.84 million shares). The securities will be redeemed, Norilsk Nickel says.
The possibility of maintaining quotes through buyback was voiced by head of Interros (which owns 30.3% of the company) and general director of Norilsk Nickel Vladimir Potanin in January, who stressed that only free-float will be bought back. In addition to Interros key shareholders of Norilsk Nickel are UC Rusal of Oleg Deripaska (27.8%) and Crispian Investments Ltd of Roman Abramovich and Alexander Abramov (5.87%), 3.2% more of Norilsk Nickel belonged to Metalloinvest at the end of 2014. After the buyback and redemption of the securities the package of Interros in the company could increase to 30.85%, UC Rusal’s one - to 28,29%, Crispian’s one - to 5.97%. Metalloinvest doesn’t participate in the shareholders agreement of Norilsk Nickel and can trade stocks. Metalloinvest doesn’t comment on buyback and the opportunity to participate in it, but the financial statements of the company for 2014 states that the Norilsk Nickel’s shares arereserved for sale.
