OAO Gazprom, Russia’s natural-gas exporter, offered to buy out minority shareholders in Moscow utility OAO Mosenergo for US$5.1 billion as it seeks to gain a third of the country’s electricity industry.
State-run Gazprom is offering 6.5 rubles (25 US cents) a share for the 50.1 percent of Mosenergo it says it doesn’t already own, according to a regulatory filing yesterday. Mosenergo shares jumped as much as six percent, the most in more than seven months, and traded at 6.28 rubles at 11:24am in Moscow.
Russia’s government plans to dismantle national utility OAO Unified Energy System and spend US$120 billion through 2011 on the biggest electrification drive since the Stalin era, Bloomberg News said.
The sale of 20 thermal generators has lured Europe’s largest utilities, including Germany’s E.ON AG, Finland’s Fortum Oyj, and Italy’s Enel SpA, which acquired 30 percent of OAO OGK-5 last month for US$1.8 billion.
“In reality, this isn’t more than a US$2.5 billion offer at best, which suits Gazprom,” said Dmitry Tsaregorodtsev, an analyst at Moscow-based KIT Finance investment bank, by phone.
Unified Energy controls 36.2 percent of Mosenergo, the main supplier of heat and power to the Russian capital, and the city government owns about five percent.
“Judging by Gazprom’s actions in other power companies, they would be satisfied with 51 percent,” Tsaregorodtsev said. “They just want management control and to have the asset listed on their books. It makes little sense for them to over-feed the minorities.”
