Gazprom: Improving Investor Relationships
The Gazprom Board of Directors commended the Company’s efforts in strengthening the relationships with investors and shareholders and tasked the Management Committee to further pursue this line of action.
It was noted that despite the challenging macroeconomic conditions Gazprom continued to promote the long-term and efficient cooperation with the investment community.
In order to maintain an open and constructive dialogue, Gazprom arranges regular meetings of its top managers with investors and analysts via conference calls, road shows, visits to Gazprom’s industrial facilities and in other formats. The Company’s representatives take part in Russian and international conferences hosted by leading investment banks.
The annual Investor Day of Gazprom is highly popular. This February, the event held in New York and London drew nearly 200 portfolio managers and analysts from major international investment funds and credit institutions. Besides, over 140 investors and analysts were involved in the event via remote online access. The Gazprom leadership held around 40 individual meetings with representatives of investment funds.
Direct communication allows analysts and investors to get first-hand detailed and relevant information about Gazprom’s activities, its recent achievements and growth strategy. This has a positive effect on the appraisal of future investments in the Company’s securities. Major foreign and Russian investment banks produce regular analytical reports on Gazprom’s shares. At present, most analysts recommend to ‘buy’ and to ‘hold.’
Gazprom continues to improve its corporate governance methods, taking into account the best global practices in this area. In 2015, a number of new documents were adopted, including the Regulation on remuneration for the Gazprom Audit Commission Members and the updated Regulation on the procedure for determining the amount of remuneration for the Company’s Board of Directors Members. The latter document accounts for the KPI guidelines issued jointly by the Ministry of Economic Development and the Federal Agency for State Property Management of the Russian Federation.
Gazprom consistently increases the amount of disclosed information in order to enhance the transparency of its business activities. In 2015, the Company’s website structure was reorganized, including the ‘Investors’ section. New subsections, such as ‘Main principles of procurement policy’ and ‘Fighting fraud, corruption, embezzlement and conflict of interests,’ were added. The website content was supplemented with new information about the General Shareholders Meeting, the registrar and the Board of Directors’ activities.
The Company keeps working to diversify its investor base and sources of financing through, inter alia, expanding its presence in the financial markets of the Asia-Pacific region.
Gazprom plans to further develop its cooperation with current and potential investors and shareholders with a view to increase the Company’s capitalization and cut down new borrowing costs.
