WSJ on Gazprom

Here’s a sample of the Journal‘s look at Gazprom, the Russian natural gas giant.

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a long-awaited decree removing all curbs on foreign ownership of shares of OAO Gazprom, the world’s biggest natural-gas company, a move that will turn it into one of the world’s leading emerging-market stocks.
This event, which investors have been anticipating for years, provided a fitting climax to a bullish year that has seen Russia’s main share index soar by 80%, beating most other markets. Under the old rules, foreigners could buy only London-listed American depositary shares in the state-run gas monopoly. Those traded at a premium to shares traded in Moscow, and foreign ownership of Gazprom was capped at 20%.
The changes will eliminate long-held concerns of Western money managers, making Gazprom a must-have stock for big funds. It is unclear how much this will affect Gazprom’s price, as anticipation of Mr. Putin’s decree was factored into the stock.
“This is a landmark event for the whole of our capital market,” said Dmitry Medvedev, Gazprom chairman and Russia’s deputy prime minister. Share liberalization will attract “world-class foreign investors” into the company and allow Gazprom to join “the elite club of the biggest companies” as measured by capitalization, he said.

Yesterday was a fairly quiet day on Wall Street. The S&P 500 gained 0.04% and our Buy List rose 0.10%. Our best stocks were CACI (CAI), Frontier Airlines (FRNT) and Brown & Brown (BRO). Even the long weekend, the market will be closed on Monday.

Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on December 24th, 2005 at 3:52 pm

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