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Eastern Europe
April 5, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 20
expects capital outflow to gradually slow in the upcoming months and to amount to $25bn-30bn for 2019 overall.
In trade there were a few changes. Russia’s main buyers of goods remain the same, led by China that is purchasing a steady $60bn worth a goods a month followed by the Netherlands and Germany with $46bn and $36bn respectively. From the emerging Europe states Belarus and Turkey remain Russia’s biggest customer of goods, buying $23bn each in January.
The first change in the list is Ukraine’s continued slid down the roster of partners, falling from
13th place to 18th place with purchases of Russian goods decreasing from $10.4bn in December to $9.98bn in January. Ukraine is well behind Belarus
despite the fact that the country is about three times larger.
Overall, the volume of goods Russia sold to its main trade partners fell slightly in January from $411bn in December to $407bn in January.
There were almost no changes in the structure
of the suppliers to Russia although the overall volume of imports was down slightly from $227bn in December to $220bn in January, leaving Russia with a substantial trade surplus in goods.
While Russia continues to cut exports to Ukraine the level of imports from Ukraine remained roughly stable at $5.8bn in January leaving Ukraine is a substantial trade deficit in goods
of a bit more than $4bn.
Russia's Polyus Gold sold 3.8% SPO for $400mn
Russia's largest gold producer Polyus Gold sold a 3.84% stake in an accelerated book-building for an SPO of on the Moscow Exchange, raising $390mn, the company said in a statement on April 4.
Russia’s equity market is slowly coming back to life. Since the beginning of 2019 there have been a number of equity deals carried out on Russian stock market, after a desert of no deals since August 2018.
“[The company] has successfully sold approxi- mately 5.13mn ordinary shares in the form of Global Depositary Shares (“GDSs”) and ordinary shares of the company,” the statement says. “The sale, carried out by way of an accelerated book- build, was priced at $38 per GDS corresponding to a price of $76 per ordinary share, with two GDSs representing an interest in one ordinary share.”
This included sales of equity in Norilsk Nick-
el and Evraz by oligarch Roman Abramovich and
Alexander Abramov, the sale of minority stake
in the TCS banking Group by its owner Oleg Tinkov that owns Russia’s only fully online bank Tinkoff bank, preparation of a SPO by meat major Cherkizovo, and a possible IPO of Russian rail operator RusTransCom that was announced
last week.
Polyus Gold shares have ridden the wave of rising demand from investors that are back in “risk on” mode. The SPO sold a stake that was part of the 82.44% portfolio held by the holding company Polyus Gold International, controlled by Said Kerimov, the son of billionaire and senator Suleiman Kerimov.
The deal increases the company’s freefloat from 16.67% to 20.51%. The majority owners retain a stake of 78.6%. The company will not receive the proceeds from the sale, Polyus said.