OREANDA-NEWS. On 06 August 2009 Veles Capital released daily review:

Transneft fights for credit rates lowering. Transneft and Sberbank negotiated the rate reduction on the credits with 18% to 13% annually, states the company, imparts Interfax.

Gazprom Neft stabilizes the extraction and keeps the target for 2020. Gazprom Neft managed to overcome the long time oil extraction volumes decline. The company also kept the plans on reaching the extraction volume of 100 mn tons by 2020 and continues going by the activities program for executing the given target.

MTS approved the purchase of Comstar. The board of directors of AFK Sistema and MTS approved the deal on 1.272 bn USD, resulting from which MTS gained control over Comstar-UTS. The cellular operator will buy 50.9% of Comstar from AFK, considering the estimation of 5.98 USD per share, announced MTS and Sistema. The deal is planned to be closed in October. The aim of Sistema, according to its president Leonid Melamed, is the cost upping of AFK’s telecom-assets and management optimization.

Rostelecom reported for 2Q 2009. Net profit by RAS of Rostelecom, JSC in 1H 2009 totaled 2.36 bn RUR, which is 52.6% lower than the estimate of the previous year. The sales lowered by 0.1% to 30.547 bn RUR.