MOSCOW, August 14 (RIA Novosti) - A consortium of banks has notified Rosneft that it will exercise an option to float additional shares in the company," the state-owned oil company said Monday.
Rosneft closed the books July 14 on its initial public offering - the biggest in Russian history and the fifth largest in the world - placing 1.4 billion ordinary shares (GDRs overseas) in Moscow and London worth a total of $10.4 billion. The crude producer also granted its IPO joint global coordinators an option of an additional stock floatation, entitling them to acquire 52,980,132 GDRs at the price of placement, or 4% of the total number of its shares and GDRs.
On August 11, ABN AMRO Rothschild, Dresdner Kleinwort (investment units of Dresdner Bank AG), JPMorgan Securities Ltd. and Morgan Stanley & Co. International Limited, acting as the joint global coordinators for Rosneft's international offer, notified the oil producer they would exercise an option to place an additional 31,189,362 shares in the company in the form of Global Depositary Receipts (GDRs), Rosneft said.
"The price of a share placed under the option was $7.55 per share and per GDR [representing one share] and corresponded to the offer price announced July 14, 2006," the company said in a news release.
The deal is expected to be closed August 16.
Rosneft expects to use the IPO proceeds to repay a $7.5 billion syndicated loan, which Rosneftegaz, its parent company, received in September 2005 to acquire a 10.74% stake in energy giant Gazprom.
