Market fluctuations impact on Petrolinvest's plans

Ryszard Krauze's Petrolinvest announced over the weekend that it had
signed several addendums to a number of investment contracts, which were signed with its Kazakh partners back in mid January. The new documents changed the price and the number of shares which will be issued for the Kazakh partners by the Polish firm. Initially, the issue price was set at zł.310-320, which corresponded to the market price of the firm at the beginning of the year.

However, over the last 14 weeks capitalization of the stock-listed firm has dropped by over 50% and, by the close of trade on Monday, the shares were being sold for zł.130.3. The amount for which the Kazakh partners were to take over a 40% stake in Petrolinvest will now enable them to take over a 52% stake. In this way, Ryszard Krauze's stake would drop to 20.6%, while initially it was to remain at 25.6%.

"I believe that eventually the Kazakh investors will take over up to a 40% stake," said Paweł Gricuk, president of Petrolinvest.

It is also worth remembering that, in June, Petrolinvest's general shareholders meeting gave Ryszard Krauze the right to swap existing liabilities of the firm amounting to zł.212.6 million into shares and regain control over the company. Source: Parkiet