‘Gazprom’ has at last officially admitted that its subsidiary ‘Gazprombank’ is a
principal shareholder of RAO UES and ‘Mosenergo’. The gas monopoly, however, has
not come to any final decision as to what it should do with the assets whose
acquisition cost almost $1 bln.

The state with 52.7% of shares is the principal shareholder of RAO ‘UES of
Russia’. The rest of the shares are held in custody by the ‘national Depository
Center’ (14.03%), ‘ING Bank (Eurasia) ZAO’ (6.6%), ZAO ‘Depository-Clearing
cCompany’ (7.2%) and Sberbank (10.5%). RAO controls 50.87% of ‘Mosenergo’
shares. Other large shareholders include Renaissance Capital (12%), Guta bank
(4%) and the Moscow government (about 3%).

‘Vedomosti’ got an access to the investment memorandum that Gazprom prepared for
buyers of its 30-year bonds. It is mentioned in the document that in May 2003
the affiliated bank of the monopoly – Gazprombank – acquired 15.76% of
‘Mosenergo’’s shares for 10.9 bln rubles, in January 2004 – 5.3% share of RAO
UES for 19.8 bln rubles. The information about the transactions was available to
‘Vedomosti’ earlier through its sources close to Gazprom. However, until now the
company has refused to admit that either Gazprom itself or any if its
subsidiaries have anything to do with buying out energy assets.

<a href="http://www.corp-gov.ru/bd/db.php3?db_id=2243&base_id=3">Read more (in
Russian)</a>.


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