Gazprom sells billions in stocks at huge discount without revealing buyer

The predominantly state-owned Russian gas company Gazprom has unveiled the price at which it recently sold 3.59 percent of its stocks. Because the stocks technically belong to Gazprom Gas Distribution, of which Gazprom is the parent, regulations on the sale were looser than they would have been for Gazprom’s own stock. For that reason, the company was able to sell the stocks at 220 rubles ($3.45) each for a total of 188 billion rubles (more than $2.9 billion).

That price is 13.22 percent lower than the market price of Gazprom stocks when markets closed on November 21, Vedomosti wrote. It is 11 percent lower than the closing price listed the day before the deal was announced.

The new owner of the Gazprom stock has not been revealed. However, the Russian investigative outlet The Bell reported that this deal was virtually identical to one completed in July. Following that heavily discounted sale, Bloomberg asserted that the newly sold stocks had gone to a group of investors led by a company with ties to Arkady Rotenberg. While Rotenberg’s representatives denied that claim, The Bell suggested that the oligarch’s companies may have been the beneficiaries of Gazprom’s latest deal as well.