Russia's Finance Ministry expects to replace sovereign Eurobonds all at once - Kolychev

MOSCOW. Oct 18 (Interfax) - Russia's Finance Ministry expects to replace sovereign Eurobonds all at once, Deputy Finance Minister Vladimir Kolychev said.

The Finance Ministry in early September announced the start of replacing all outstanding issues of Russian Eurobonds. The amount of the coupon yield, the frequency of payments, the maturity date, and the nominal value of the replacement Russian Eurobonds will be in line with the similar terms and conditions of the Eurobonds being replaced. The ministry plans to accept offers on December 5.

"The deal itself is in December. We expect that we could replace all of this at once," Kolychev said during the debt session at the Moscow Financial Forum.

He said just over $30 billion in sovereign Eurobonds were outstanding.

"Residents held about 20 billion of these, in dollar equivalent on some more or less relevant date, this is what our depositaries see. There are some offshore, perhaps a significant portion, which might also be held either by residents or friendly non-residents, and they might also want to participate. As you have seen, for example, with other assets - as it turns out as the replacement is carried out that there are many more residents there than there seemed according to official statistics," he said.

Kolychev said the Finance Ministry had launched the sovereign Eurobond replacement at the market's request. "They wanted us to boost the liquidity of our onshore market for Eurobonds. Maybe preparations were a little slow, but still, this is what we are doing. To make our onshore market more liquid we are urging everyone [holders] to get it done quickly," he said.

The Finance Ministry is replacing 13 Eurobond issues at the same time, unlike, for example, Gazprom , the biggest corporate replacement bond issuer, which replaced each of its issues in a separate deal.

The ministry did not see the point in stretching the sovereign Eurobonds replacement out over time, Denis Mamonov, head of the ministry's Public Debt and State Financial Assets Department, told Interfax on the sidelines of the forum.

"The deal is comprehensible, the market already knows what replacement bonds are, the procedure is more or less clear, so we simply did not see the point in spinning all this out. The infrastructure will cope as well," he said.