OREANDA-NEWS. State-owned gas major Gazprom and coal major SUEK plan to complete the creation of coal and energy joint venture by the end of 2007. Afterwards the new company will carry out IPO in May-Nov 2008. This information was provided to by Geoff Crocker, the advisor to SUEK and the chairman of the company’s foreign subsidiary SUEK AG.

Notably, the 50%+1 share in the new entity will belong to the gas major. We should remind that Gazprom and SUEK initially announced about the creation of the venture in Feb 2007. Originally it was planned to create the venture in Q1/07, but the negotiation took longer than expected. In addition, the local antimonopoly regulator strongly opposes this deal and sent to the government a special report on this issue.