Experts comment on competition for Mosenergo utility - 6 March, 2003

Three investment companies are competing for seats on the board of directors of Mosenegro, the Moscow energy grid, experts reported in an interview with RBC. The first company is Renaissance Capital, which has actually admitted it was buying up shares of Mosenergo. Renaissance Capital has proposed seven candidates for the Mosenergo board, including four representatives of the investment group. According to Sergey Suverov, an analyst from the Zenit bank, other candidates for the board are incumbent board members Pavel Teplukhin, the Troika Dialog President, and Anatoly Chabak, General Director of NIKoil-Sberezheniya (Savings). A representative of Renaissance Capital has refused to comment on this information. Meanwhile, according to RBC analysts, one of the candidates to the Mosenergo board from Renaissance Capital is a representative of GP Morgan. The list of candidates is expected to be approved by the board of the energy utility on March 11, 2003.

According to the bank expert, several large market players are buying up shares of Mosenergo, which will inevitably result in a "dramatic" rise in share prices. On March 5, Mosenergo's shares surged 6.5 percent and the company's capitalization reached $1.337bn. According to preliminary data, the company's net profits reached about 650m rubles (about $20.58m) in 2002. Mosenergo's sales profits dropped 45.1 percent compared to 2001 and its profitability reduced more than 2.6-fold to 9.5 percent.