Baltika Breweries Reduces Its Share Capital
OREANDA-NEWS. January 15, 2008. January 9, 2008 marked the completion of the process of reducing the share capital of Baltika Breweries by means of a buy-back and retirement of shares. In accordance with the decision of shareholders adopted on October 15, 2007, the Company purchased 9,828,550 ordinary and 1,213,545 preference A-type shares, the Baltika press service reported.
The buy-back of shares took place in keeping with legislation of Russian Federation and in the order established by the Board of Directors. All of the Company’s shareholders were given the right to take part in the process — owners of both registered ordinary and preference A-type shares, regardless of the number of shares they owned, and including minority shareholders in the regions (Tula, Yaroslavl, Rostov, Chelyabinsk, Voronezh, Krasnoyarsk), for whom access to the stock exchange is rather difficult.
Baltika offered shareholders a fair price: each ordinary share was valued at 1,300 rubles, and each preference share, at 880 rubles. In this way, the sellers were able to achieve the market price of their shares without paying the expenses of intermediaries, brokers and stock exchange fees, commissions and other costs relating to the sale of securities.
The completed buy-back operation reflects the Company’s striving to increase return per share, raise the attractiveness of investing in Baltika and improve the capital structure of the Company.
In the course of restructuring capital, at the end of 2007, the Company took out bank loans totaling more than 300 million Euros which will be used to finance the share buy-back and partly to finance investment projects relating to the Company’s ongoing operations (increasing production capacity, building a new brewery in Novosibirsk, etc.)
As the Company forecast, after the amount of share capital changed, the percentage of voting shares held by Baltic Beverages Holding AB (BBH), the majority shareholder of Baltika, did not increase and amounted to 90.54%. This corresponds to the previously announced intention of the Board of Directors of Baltika Breweries to remain a public company.
Over the course of the last several years, Baltika Breweries shares (both ordinary and preference shares) have been trading freely on the stock exchanges and on over the counter markets. Company shares underwent listing procedures and have been quoted on two organised trading platforms in the country - MICE (the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange) and RTS (the Russian Trading System, since 2001). At present, the Company shares are in circulation on the stock exchanges and are included in the section of the list of "Securities allowed to circulate but not included in quotation lists."
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