Mosenergo`s shareholders approve reorganization plan
29 June 2004 18:44
Shareholders of Mosenergo approved a project on reorganizing the company at an annual general meeting, which took place on June 28, 2004, a source close to the company’s Board of Directors told RBC. In fact, reforms at Mosenergo can become the first positive experience of reforming an energy company in Russia, which affects foreign investors as well. Some 99.77 percent of the shareholders, who took part in the meeting, supported the compromise achieved by the company’s management headed by Arkady Yevstafyev. In total, 82.43 percent of the shareholders, who had the right to participate in annual shareholders’ meetings, took part in this meeting.
According to the project, Mosenergo will be reorganized by means of establishing several companies without changing the authorized capital of Mosenergo. Most energy generating assets (17 electrical power stations), excluding those that are to be transferred to wholesale energy generating companies, will remain in the structure of the assets of Moscow City Generation Company, which will still use the Mosenergo brand. On the basis of Mosenergo, some four energy generating companies, Moscow city and Moscow region electrical distribution companies, a heating company, a sales company, a managing company, the main network company as well as companies that will be dealing with construction, design, repair and other services are planned to be created in the course of the reorganization of Mosenergo. At the same time, shareholders who did not take part in the annual meeting or voted against this project may offer their shares for purchase to the management of the company.
According to a preliminary schedule of the company’s reorganization, it is expected that a shareholder meeting of each newly established company will take place in November 2004 and the state registration of the new public companies will be completed by the beginning of 2005. According to agreements concluded between RAO UES and the governments of Moscow and the Moscow region, an exchange of shares of Moscow City Heating Network Company and Moscow City Electricity network Company for shares that the Moscow government has in other companies is expected to happen in the fall 2005.
In addition, dividends for 2003 totaling RUR0.02169 (about $0.0007) per common share were approved at the annual general shareholders’ meeting. As a result, the volume of dividend payments for 2003 will increase by 18 percent. The total volume of dividend payments will reach some RUR613.126m (about $21.13m). The net income of Mosenergo under Russian Accounting Standards increased by almost 2.7 times in 2003 and reached RUR1.73bn ($59.61m).
The shareholders’ meeting also elected a new Board of Directors of the company consisting of 13 people. Yury Udaltsov, a member of the Executive Board of RAO UES was elected as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Mosenergo.
The authorized capital of Mosenergo amounts to some RUR28.267bn (about $984.39m). It is divided into the same number of shares with a par value of RUR1 (about $0.034). RAO UES owns 50.85 percent of the shares, the department of state and municipal property of Moscow together with Bank of Moscow controls about 8 percent and Gazprombank has 15.76 percent. In addition, about 9.5 percent of the shares were deposited as ADRs.
[RBCTop]
