More Than 10 Million Shares of NIS Change Owner

At the trading at the Belgrade Stock Exchange on May 6, more than 10 million shares of Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS) changed the owner, as announced on the N1 website.

In the previously agreed so-called “block trading”, a transaction of nearly RSD 7.2 billion, or around EUR 61 million, was realized.

This quantity of shares is slightly over 6% of the total number of shares, so, if the seller is the Russian co-owner Gazprom Neft, its stake has reduced to 50%.

In the block trading at the Belgrade Stock Exchange, 10,035,687 shares of NIS were sold for a total of RSD 7,195,587,579.

The price per share was RSD 717, which is considerably more than in regular trading, where it was traded at RSD 530.

Before this transaction, the Russian Gazprom Neft owned a total of 91,565,887 shares, and the Republic of Serbia owned 48,712,537, as shown by the data of the Central Securities Depository and Clearing House.

The Russian co-owner had a 56.2% stake, and the state of Serbia owned 29.9%.

Combined, it amounts to 140,278,424 shares of a total of 163,060,400 existing shares. Precisely 6.15% shares were sold.

If this amount is sold by Gazprom Neft, it is no longer the majority owner, because, with this transaction, the stake of the Russian co-owner goes down to exactly 50%, N1 writes.

The Russians remain the majority owners of NIS even after the sale of 6.15% of the company’s shares at the Belgrade Stock Exchange, said the president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, Beta reports. At a press conference, he said that the Russian Gazprom Neft had sold that share package to Gazprom, which is not under sanctions of the western countries.