Baltika shareholders vote to reduce charter capital 5%
ST. PETERSBURG. March 20 (Interfax) - The shareholders of OJSC Baltika Brewing Company vote to reduce the company's charter capital nearly 5% at an extraordinary meeting on March 16, the company said.
Charter capital will be reduced by 4.8% from 164.041 million rubles to 156.087 million rubles. It is being reduced due to the cancellation of repurchased shares. Baltika completed a buyback on July 22, 2011, and on January 31 the board decided that these shares should cancelled with a corresponding reduction of charter capital amounting to the par value of the cancelled shares, or 7,954,071 rubles.
Baltika bought back 7,319,202 ordinary and 543,241 preferred shares almost 10.997 billion rubles last year. Since the total value of ordinary and preferred shares tendered for buyback exceeded the maximum amount of funds earmarked for the buyback, a share conversion ratio has been established at 0.8701 for ordinary shares and 0.5355 for preferred shares.
Carlsberg, which owns around 85% in Baltika, might offer to buy minority shareholders out by May of this year at a price of at least 1,550 rubles per share. Carlsberg plans to spend no more than 6.5 billion Danish kroner (around $1.15 billion) buying the outstanding 15% of Baltika. Carlsberg also plans to delist Baltika's shares.
Baltika has eleven breweries in ten Russian regions, and one in Azerbaijan.
