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bne July 2019 The Month That Was I 9
Finance
Eastern Europe
The shares of Russian independent oil major Lukoil made it to the global top 10 of the 2019 Value Creators Rankings by the Boston Consult-
ing Group (BCG), bringing investors returns of 27.1% for the period of 2014 to 2018. Three Russian companies made it to the top 50, with another private gas company Novatek (23.5% return) and Russia's largest bank state- controlled Sberbank (16.6%).
Russia is not going to provide new loans to Belarus nor discuss possible compensation for Russia’s so-called tax manoeuvre in the oil sector until the two countries agree on a vision for their further "integration", according to Anton Siluanov, Russian First Deputy PM and Finance Minister.
The management of Russia's state oil pipeline monopoly Transneft expects to pay 50% of IFRS net profit in divi- dends for 2018, Interfax said on June 7 citing the CEO of the company Nikolay Tokarev. Transneft remains the next big SEO to confirm its dividends, but its dividend outlook, however, is endan- gered by the ongoing risks surrounding the Druzhba pipeline crisis.
Favourable market conditions are leading up to 10 Russian companies
to consider issuing Eurobonds by
the end of this year, VTB Capital investment bank's head of debt capital markets Andrey Solovyov told Reuters in a report. "The market is really good now ... There was a rally in sovereign and corporate Eurobonds. The sanctions theme is losing strength, investors expect good yields. And Russia is the country that keeps on offering good yields," Solovyov argues.
The shares of Russia's natural gas giant Gazprom are "trading at fair value" after surging by 40% on a recent surprise dividend announcement,
BCS Global Markets wrote on June 10, downgrading the recommendation on
the name to Hold, but upgrading the target price to $7.5 per GDR.
Leading Russian consumer lender TCS Group that operates Russia’s only pure online bank Tinkoff Bank will suspend 2019 dividend payments due to preparations for the upcoming SPO, the chairman of the bank's board Oliver Hughes announced.
Ukraine’s Finance Ministry has mandated BNP Paribas and Gold- man Sachs International as joint lead managers and joint bookrunners for a euro-denominated Eurobond issue in London, Frankfurt, Munich and Milan, commencing on June 10.
The Ukrainian leadership is going
to launch a new three to four-year programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by late 2019, according to newly appointed deputy head of the presidential administration Oleksiy Honcharuk.
Ukraine's state-owned PrivatBank, nationalised in late 2016, estimates its losses due to the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 at more than $9bn, according to the bank's deputy board chairperson Halyna Pakhachuk. She told the NV.Business outlet that the lawsuit was filed in the Permanent Court of Arbi- tration in The Hague regarding assets in Crimea for the amount of over $1bn.
Russia has suspended allocation of loans to Belarus for a total amount
of $600mn, according to Belarusian Finance Minister Maksim Yermolovich.
Belarus state development agency,
the Development Bank of Belarus (DBB), is mulling a new placement of BYN-denominated Eurobonds in 2020, the DBB's chairman Andrei Zhish- kevich told government news agency BELTA in London on June 10. In May, the DBB placed a debut issue of Euro- bonds denominated in national currency in the amount of BYN210mn (around $105mn) with a circulation period
of three years with a rate of 12.00% per annum. The move followed April's placement of five-year $500mn debut Eurobonds by DBB with yield of 6.75%.
Ukraine’s Finance Ministry projects the state debt to fall to 42.4% of GDP by the end of 2022 from 52.3% of GDP at the end of 2018, according to the Mid-Term Strategy of State Debt Man- agement for 2019-2022 adopted by the Cabinet of Ministers on June 5.
Central Europe
Hungarian property developer Wing- holding announced a €100mn corpo- rate bond programme. The company
is to issue fixed or floating rate bonds with maturities of three to ten years. The bonds will be listed on the Budapest Stock Exchange.
Danske Bank agreed to sell its port- folio of Estonian private loans to LHV Pank for €410mn, Reuters reported quoting LHV. The Danish lender is get- ting out of the Baltic states and Russia following a money laundering scan- dal centring on its Estonian branch.
Southeast Europe
Twelve Turkish banks are to offer companies a total of Turkish lira TRY25bn ($4.31bn) as part of
a Treasury-backed loan package, banking association TBB said. Ankara is using such packages to boost Turkey’s enfeebled economy, brought low by last summer’s currency crisis.
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