Business in Brief

Norilsk Deal Probed

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) -- Norilsk Nickel's billionaire owner Vladimir Potanin may have to dispose of his 20 percent stake in Gold Fields Ltd., a South African gold miner, if a review of the purchase by the Central Bank concludes it was bought improperly, The Guardian reported, without saying where it got the information.

Norilsk, a nickel mining, bought the shareholding earlier this year for $1 billion, The Guardian said. The Central Bank has been reviewing the purchase and may conclude it was done without appropriate authority, the paper said. Under rules in place at the time, Norilsk required approval to take capital out of the country when buying a stake in a foreign company, the paper said.

Norilsk has said the shareholding is legal, the paper said. The Central Bank said its review was a confidential matter, the paper said.

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VimpelCom Soars

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) -- VimpelCom, Russia's second-largest mobile-phone company by subscribers, said Thursday quarterly profit rose 42 percent as it boosted the number of subscribers in the nation's regions.

Third-quarter net income rose to $102 million, or $1.91 per American depositary receipt, from $72.2 million, or $1.42, in the year-earlier period, it said in a statement Thursday. Revenue rose 58.9 percent to $602 million. The results include KaR-Tel, a Kazakhstan mobile operator acquired in September.

VimpelCom added 4.2 million new subscribers in the third quarter, including 3.6 million in Russia, as a sixth year of economic growth boosted incomes and enabled more Russian to buy cellular phones.

The Moscow-based company launched service in eight new Russian regions during the period, the statement said.

VimpelCom's market share in Russia rose to 33.7 percent as of Sept. 30, compared with 31 percent a year earlier.

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UES to Borrow $622M

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) -- Unified Energy Systems plans to borrow 17.8 billion rubles ($622 million) next year to finance the completion of six power plants and upgrades of the company's electricity grid.

The government was due to discuss UES's investment and borrowing plans at a meeting today. UES proposes to spend 8.5 billion rubles of the borrowed funds on construction of power generators and the rest on upgrading the grid, according to a statement published on the government's web site on Thursday.

"Investments are being prioritized on the basis of long-term forecast of production and consumption of electricity, linked with general parameters of Russia's economic development," the government said in the statement.

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Russneft Buys Fields

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) -- Russneft, an oil producer that pumps some 200,000 barrels of crude a day, bought rights for six Siberian oil fields with 205 million barrels in reserves, Vedomosti said Thursday, citing an unidentified Russneft official.

The company paid $30 million to add the fields to its reserves of 2.2 billion barrels of oil, the paper said. Only one of Russneft's new fields already produces oil, and the rest are yet to be tapped, it said. Russneft was created in September 2002 by millionaire Mikhail Gutseriyev with financial support of Swiss commodity trader Glencore International AG, Vedomosti said.

In January, Russneft paid $289 million to buy oil assets of Sistema, a Russian group focusing on telecommunications and financial services, and controlled by billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov.

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Gazprom U.K. Unit

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) -- Gazprom, the world's biggest natural-gas producer, plans to invest ?100 million ($186 million) in a new British marketing and trading division, The Guardian reported Thursday, citing the company.

The Moscow-based company, 39 percent owned by the Russian government, said its U.K. unit will import 13 billion cubic meters and provide one-tenth of Britain's gas consumption by 2010, the newspaper reported.

Gazprom will invest in new storage systems, and is considering building a gas pipeline between Europe and Britain, The Guardian said. The company is in talks about closer cooperation with Centrica, Britain's largest energy supplier, it said.

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$500M LUKoil Plan

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) -- LUKoil, Russia's largest oil producer, plans to sell at least $500 million of eurobonds after it receives investment-grade debt ratings, deputy CEO Leonid Fedun said Thursday.

The company expects upgrades from Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's in 2005, Fedun told investors in Moscow. Both ratings companies rank LUKoil's debt at two levels lower than investment grade.

The company also plans to raise its debt in rubles as revenue in Russian currency surges because of large domestic fuel sales, said Alexander Matytsyn, a deputy chief executive at the company.