Aviastar to Name Investor

Aviastar to Name Investor

Ulyanovsk-based Aviastar aircraft plant may soon name a new investor, which will
buy 25 % shares of Aviastar-SP, Vedomosti Newspaper reported today.

A special shareholder meeting, which aimed to approve an issuance of additional
shares, was originally scheduled for April 12. However, according to the
company`s spokesman, at the last moment the board decided to postpone the
meeting until this week.

The spokesman confirmed that the meeting`s agenda included an item on the
issuance of additional shares and approval of an agreement with a `strategic`
investor, which would buy the newly issued shares. The spokesman, however,
declined to name the investor, pointing out that it was a large and well-known
Russian company, which already owned aircraft building businesses.

According to analysts, this undisclosed investor could be either of the two
large Russian holding companies, who already possess aircraft plants /Sibirsky
Aluminium, which controls Aviakor plant and Kaskol, which manages Sokol plant/.

The both companies, however, dismissed allegations that they were in talks with
Aviastar on purchase of its shares.

Ulyanovsk-based Aviastar aircraft plant is a most successful business of the
Russian aircraft industry. Last year, the company built two Tupolev Tu-204s and
one Antonov An-124. This is deemed a good result, given that the whole aircraft
industry manufactured only 22 civil aircraft over the last decade.

The company`s major shareholers are JSC Tupolev /73.75 percent/ and Aviastar
Aviation Production Complex /25.4 %/.

/AVIA.RU/
http://www.avia.ru