Moscow press review for February 21, 2010
MOSCOW. Feb 21 (Interfax) - The following is a digest of Moscow newspapers published on February 21. Interfax does not accept liability for information in these stories.
VEDOMOSTI:
TNK-BP is looking closely at Poland's Grupa Lotos as the Polish government plans to sell its 53.2% stake in the group in 2011, three sources close to the company and the Polish Cabinet say. In January TNK-BP representatives travelled to Poland for talks, they say. A company representative did not comment on its plans of involvement in the contest (bidding is open until March 18) but said that it is considering options of involvement in foreign processing projects. Grupa Lotos is the third biggest company in Poland in terms of receipts ($4.9 billion in 2010). Its main assets are 317 filling stations (including jobber) and an oil refinery in Gdansk. It expects to win up to 30% of the oil product wholesale market in Poland and 10% of the retail market by 2012. ("Fighting for Lotos")
The two-year dispute between energy companies and the authorities over the terms of power delivery agreements has proved fruitful - the guarantees of the reimbursement of investment that they offer may become a commodity in itself. Other consumers may follow RusAl in the rivalry for the concession of rights under these agreements with the energy companies, two sources close to the holding and one of the energy companies say. One of them says NLMK is ready to invest in power plants. The second source heard about such intentions of TNK-BP (RTS: TNK-BP). The company is ready to invest in the advancement of its own generating assets in exchange for being relieved of commitments to make payments under power delivery contracts, an NLMK representative confirmed. An official representative of TNK-BP declined to answer the questions. ("We'll build them ourselves")
The ALROSA managing board on Monday will discuss the company development strategy until 2018. Vedomosti has succeeded in obtaining the document. By 2018 ALROSA plans to boost diamond extraction 16.8% to 39.6 million carat, and investments in core business in eight years are expected to total 215.3 billion rubles, the presentation says. It does not specify the projects on which the money will be spent but earlier the company announced that it would concentrate on the construction of three mines in the next few years - Mir, Aikhal and Udachny. It intends to raise part of the funds for the projects from placing shares (it will be ready for the IPO by the end of the year, it is evaluated at about $8 billion to $10 billion, and intends to raise $1.5 billion to $2 billion). ("ALROSA Plan")
The merger of Uralkali and Silvinit should be completed only by end of H1 and the head for the future potassium giant has already been found - Vladislav Baumgertner. The Uralkali Board of Directors may appoint Baumgertner on Monday, two sources close to Uralkali and Silvinit told Vedomosti. Presently Baumgertner is the general director of Silvinit while Pavel Grachev heads Uralkali. Baumgertner is expected to step down from his post at Silvinit and the acting CEO is most likely to be appointed on Tuesday, one of the Vedomosti sources said. ("Baumgertner coming Back", also in Kommersant - p. "Vladislav Baumgertner returning to Uralkali")
MTS will complete the purchase of 100% in Comstar after which it will have the full right to call itself the operator of both mobile and ground communications. MTS President Mikhail Shamolin does not rule out other purchases of wire line operators. However, the mobile sector still promises to be more eventful. At the end of last year Megafon started catching up MTS. In the near future it may leave the leader back and come to first place in revenues in Russia. At the end of this year the government may put up for sale licenses for 4G communications. ("Many Industries will depend on Cellular Networks," - Mikhail Shamolin, President of Mobile Telesystems )
KOMMERSANT
The Natural Resources Ministry has confirmed that the exploration license issued to Rosneft and BP for sections in the Kara Sea will be altered and will not include borders of parts of the emerging Russian Arctic national park. The key issue which the ministry is wrestling with now is whether BP and Rosneft will be allowed to drill horizontal wells under the national park. In theory the law protects all resources, including "other" in such territories. Rosprirodnadzor environmental protection watchdog unlike the Federal Agency for Subsoil Resources believes that oil and gas also belong to such resources. (p. 6 "Drilling sidewise")
This week the Cabinet will have to choose one of two ways of distributing grain from the state intervention fund - distributing it with a discount among chosen farm producers or sell it as part of grain interventions. The interventions last week already changed the price trend - in the second half of February grain prices started inching down for the first time since last autumn. It is impossible to measure the effectiveness of distributing grain - the process has been suspended until the beginning of March. (p. 6 "Grain Price starting to surrender")
Foreign players continue reducing their activeness on the Russian banking market. After Britain's Barclays, Spain's Santander and Sweden's Swedbank one more foreign bank is thinking of giving up the expansion retail business in Russia - a subsidiary of HSBC, a major international banking institution. Analysts say that it is now more profitable to sell the business for the banks that failed to bring retail lending to a significant scale before the crisis. (p. 10 "Wholesale Sale of Retail")
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