Kazakh oil group's buyback wins shareholder support, paves way for IPO
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Kazakhstan's state-owned oil and gas group will move to take control of its London-listed subsidiary and remove it from the public market after winning over minority investors, clearing the way for a proposed initial public offering of the entire company.
National Company KazMunaiGas has made a delisting of upstream unit KMG Exploration and Production a prerequisite for proceeding with its own IPO, but previous buyout attempts have failed because of disagreements over price and a breakdown in trust between the company and its minority shareholders.
At a company extraordinary general meeting on Monday afternoon, 89.5 per cent of votes were in favour of a $14 per share buyout that values the unit at $5.6bn, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.
The buyback will give KMG more than 75 per cent voting rights in the listed unit. The company said that it expected KMG EP would be removed from the London and Almaty markets on May 11.
That would allow the two companies to fully integrate and clear the road for an IPO of KMG, one of the Kazakh state’s crown jewels, as part of the Central Asian country's $70bn privatisation programme.
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