Business Pulls Out Of VTB
The VTB stocks led the losers list on Russia’s markets yesterday, closing down 2.9 percent. The analysts blame the decline on Christmas holidays in the West and on the fact that VTB executed its offer and no longer buys back stocks on the market at large. Besides, quite a number of players set to pulling out of VTB, once its quotes neared the placement price.
Contrary to general expectations of the market, VTB hadn’t dropped to the placement price by Christmas. But the downward trend gained momentum once the western floors closed for holidays. VTB lowered 1 percent on MICEX Tuesday and topped the losers list yesterday, having shed 2.9 percent that day.
“A big portion of positive news had been played earlier, western players went for holidays and the bank halted its stocks’ buy-back after completing the offer to exchange them for the stocks of VTB North-West,” explained AntantaPioglobal analyst Maxim Osadchy.
The experts emphasized particularly high turnover of VTB reached in the past few days. The absolute record of 6.11 billion rubles was attained December 18, when VTB soared 4.08 percent on MICEX, 3.62 percent on RTS and 3.33 percent on LSE. "This turnover signals the stocks definitely have a very big buyer,” said one of the managers, specifying that two big players were buying actually. In Russia, the deals that reach $10 million on the trading floors are usually clinched either by Gazprombank or by VTB. The tricky point is that the turnover was also high (over 4 billion rubles) yesterday, in time of reverse trend.
People in VTB confirmed they had been buying back their stocks to meet obligations for taking over VTB North-West, spending more than $100 million for that purpose. The action ended in mid-December, on the eve of offer’s execution. "Yes, the quotes fell nearly 3 percent, but, before it, they had grown materially on good results of the work and on stable political situation. Attributing the drop to offer’s execution is quite groundless,” commented VTB Deputy Executive Vasily Titov.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 27, 2007
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