Moscow, Russia – November 7, 2006 – Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods OJSC [NYSE: WBD], Russia’s leading manufacturer of dairy products and beverages, today announced the successful completion of a secondary offering of common stock by certain shreholders on the Russian stock market.
Russian and foreign institutional investors, who are trading actively on the Russian stock market, acquired 4,400,000 local common shares of Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods (or 10% of the outstanding shares) through an accelerated bookbuilding process in a lead-managed public offering. Wimm-Bill-Dann’s shareholders and the management of the company are convinced that this step will contribute to a significant increase in the liquidity of the company’s shares on the Russian stock market.
The shares were offered to the market by certain shareholders. Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods did not sell any shares in, and will not receive any of the proceeds from, the offering. The shares were offered to the market within a US$36 to US$39 per share range, and sold at US$37.5 per share.
Following the transaction the holdings of Sergei Plastinin in the company’s share capital were reduced from 10.75% to9.01% , Alexandr Orlov from 3.99% to 3.17%, Viktor Evdokimov from 0.39% to 0.05%, Mikhail Dubinin from 6.52% to 5.17%, Mikhail Vishnyakov from 2.36% to 1%, ParexBanka from 4.81% to 0.42%. David Iakobachvili, Chairman of the Board of Directors, (owns 10.12%) and Gavril Yushvaev (owns 19.45%) did not participate in the offering and did not sell any shares.
Troika Dialog was the sole book-running manager of the offering.
“We welcome the interest shown by shareholders of large Russian companies, the shares of which also trade on foreign exchanges, in domestic trading platforms. The offering of Wimm-Bill-Dann’s shares took place against a backdrop of increased market activity and several other major placements by Russian companies,” notes Ruben Vardanyan, Chairman ?f Board ?f Directors and CEO of the Troika Dialog group of companies. “The very fact that the company’s shares were placed successfully on the RTS exchange among several dozen large institutional investors again demonstrates the appetite of the domestic capital markets for securities issued by strongly performing companies.”
It is anticipated that as a result of the offering, the quantity of ordinary shares of Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods OJSC which trade on the Russian stock market will increase to 18.9% of the charter capital of the company.
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