Rosneftegaz willing to buy Property Agency's stake in Inter RAO - paper
MOSCOW. July 11 (Interfax) - State holding company Rosneftegaz has agreed to buy the Federal Property Agency's 13.76% stake in power company OJSC Inter RAO UES , business daily Vedomosti reported on Thursday, citing a representative of Rosneft president and Rosneftegaz chairman Igor Sechin, as well as an unnamed federal official.
For now this is only a verbal agreement between Sechin and Property Agency head Olga Dergunova, and there are no official letters from Rosneftegaz on this issue, one of the paper's sources said.
However, nine shares in Inter RAO will remain in government hands, as they are on the list of strategic assets and cannot be sold without the Russian president's permission. Thanks to these nine shares, the Property Agency plans to maintain control over the management of the company after Rosneftegaz consolidates a controlling stake, by entering into a shareholder agreement on Inter RAO's management, the paper reported a source at the Property Agency as saying.
The representative of Sechin said that the purchase of other shares in Inter RAO "will depend on expediency." State companies and the Property Agency together hold a controlling interest in the power company.
The sale of the Property Agency's stake in Inter RAO is part of the Russian government's privatization plan for 2014-2016.
Dergunova said earlier that her agency is considering selling the Inter RAO stake to Rosneftegaz in 2013-2014 as the baseline option. "This is being discussed as the baseline model for executing the decree, that Rosneftegaz can be an investor [in the power sector]. We have the sale lined up for this or next year," she said.
Dergunova also said at the end of June that the agency and Rosneftegaz had not yet agreed on a price for the stake.
President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in the spring 2012 allowing Rosneftegaz to use the dividends it earns from the companies it owns to buy stakes in energy companies that the government is privatizing.
The government also said earlier that there were plans to consolidate the Inter RAO shares held by the state and state companies in the hands of Rosneftegaz.
Federal Grid Company UES owns 18.57% of shares in Inter RAO, state nuclear corporation Rosatom holds 12.49%, state lender Vnesheconombank (VEB) holds 5.07%, RusHydro owns 4.92% and Norilsk Nickel owns 13.21%. Treasury stock amounts to 13.9263% and the free float is 18.07%.