Latvijas Gaze's shares could be sold abroad in November

1999-07-15

RIGA (BNS) - Sale of Latvijas Gaze shares abroad could be completed already in November, Latvian Privatization Agency Director General Janis Naglis said at the LPA council meeting.

He explained that the state gas company's share price could be determined and money received for the shares at that time.

Naglis said the LPA currently is waiting for the best proposals to sell Latvijas Gaze's shares abroad from several local and foreign financial institutions, including the Austrian Investment Bank and Hansapank.

He said it would be possible to use these proposals even if it is decided in the end not to sell the company's shares abroad but place them on the domestic market.

But Naglis stressed that at this point the Latvian gas company, apart from Lattelekom, is the only Latvian company whose shares could be successfully sold abroad.

Under the agreement with the company's strategic investors, Russia's Gazprom and the German concern of Ruhrgas and Preussen Elektra, the Latvian state should retain some 10 percent of shares in Latvijas Gaze because the two strategic investors and the Latvian state together should hold more than 51 percent of shares in the company.

The LPA chief predicted previously Latvia would raise $30 million to $35 million from sale of Latvijas Gaze's shares on the international market.

The company's shares are traded on the official list of the Riga Stock Exchange. Its net audited profit in 1998 was 4.43 million lats ($7.38 million) on a net turnover of 87.28 million lats.