MOSCOW, February 26 (RIA Novosti) - An additional share issue offered by state-controlled retail savings bank Sberbank [RTS: SBER] has appreciated 9% above the original placement price, a respected business daily said Monday.
The bank's supervisory board Wednesday set the price for the additional share issue of 3.5 million new shares at 89,000 rubles (about $3,396) per share.
Sberbank's offering started to appreciate from the morning of February 22 as it climbed 4.53% on the Moscow Inter-Bank Currency Exchange (MICEX) to 97,000 rubles (about $3,695) and 4.1% in the Russian Trading System (RTS) to $3,690. The Sberbank stock rally contributed 12.8 points to the RTS index 30-point daily growth to a new record high that day, Vedomosti said.
According to Vedomosti, Alisher Usmanov, a co-owner of Gazmetal, a leading Russian metals and mining company, invested $800 million in Sberbank's offering and has already received $72 million on his investment.
Many Russian entrepreneurs invest in the shares of Russian companies, including state-controlled entities. For example, Suleiman Kerimov, who owns Nafta-Moskva oil refinery, Filaret Galchev, a co-owner of Eurocement Group, and Yelena Baturina, the owner of Inteko and wife of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, are Sberbank shareholders, Vedomosti said.
Sberbank is Russia's largest bank, with 60.57% of its shares controlled by the Central Bank. Sberbank's branch network includes 17 regional banks and 832 branches. On January 31, the Central Bank of Russia said it would cut its stake in Sberbank to 55.34% after the additional share placement.
Following the additional share issue, Sberbank's charter capital is expected to grow to 70.5 billion rubles (about $2.7 billion) from the current 60 billion rubles (about $2.3 billion) and will consist of 22.5 million ordinary shares with a par value of 3,000 rubles (about $113) each and 50 million preferred shares with a face value of 60 rubles (about $2.3) each.
