Gazprom building efficient relationship with investors and shareholders

The Gazprom Board of Directors approved the Company’s relations with investors and shareholders. The Management Committee was tasked to further improve this area of activity.

Gazprom constantly maintains open and constructive dialogue with members of the investment community and respects the rights and interests of shareholders.

The Company submits detailed information about its operations to investors and shareholders. Information required to be disclosed by the active legislation of the Russian Federation, foreign regulators and stock exchanges as well as by internal regulatory documents is provided in full.

Moreover, the Company voluntarily issues a big scope of additional information, in particular, the Environmental Report, presentations for investors and materials for the media. The layout and content of Gazprom’s website available in Russian, English and German languages are constantly improved.

Gazprom arranges regular meetings of the top managers with investors and other stakeholders. At the annual Investor Days portfolio managers and analysts from major international investment funds and banks may get answers on a wide range of issues including operational and financial results of the Company, its dividend policy and development prospects. These events usually engage a large number of participants. This year the Investor Day for the first time took place in the Asia-Pacific region and was broadcast online via the web.

Gazprom’s management holds conference calls to sum up the disclosure of financial statements under IFRS and other important events, meetings with investors and shareholders arranged, in particular, in the road show format, participates in conferences for the investment community, with Russian and international banks acting as hosts. Analysts from investment companies and banks frequently visit industrial and infrastructure facilities of Gazprom.

The Company takes efforts to engage new groups of investors. Thus, in 2014 Gazprom’s shares were included in top quotation lists of Moscow and Saint Petersburg exchanges. This enabled access to Gazprom’s securities for such major Russian investors as companies managing pension funds and insurance reserves.

Gazprom pays special attention to building up the relationship with investors from Asia-Pacific. Gazprom’s global depositary receipts were included into the quotation list of the Singapore Exchange in 2014. This year China’s biggest independent rating agency Dagong assigned the highest credit rating to Gazprom, thus making Gazprom’s debt financial instruments more appealing to Asia-Pacific investors.

In addition, Gazprom improves its corporate governance methods on a regular basis. In 2014 new items were added to the list of Gazprom’s key performance indicators motivating the Company’s top managers, namely the Return on Equity (ROE) and the Total Shareholder Return (TSR).

All the above-mentioned activities help to gain investors loyalty to Gazprom’s securities, thus enabling the Company to attract debt financing on comfortable terms from international capital markets, even despite a complicated geopolitical situation.

Gazprom will continue to extend the relationships with American and European investors and attract more investors from Asia-Pacific. Gazprom considers a possibility to broaden its presence in the major Asia-Pacific stock exchanges. Gazprom also aims to further streamline the corporate governance policy. All these actions will bring in more investors and strengthen Gazprom’s leadership role in the global energy market.

Gazprom frequently picks up professional and prestigious awards for investor and shareholder relations. For instance, in 2014, following the results of the independent study conducted by IR Magazine Russia & CIS together with Thomson Reuters Extel, Gazprom was awarded the ‘Grand Prix for best overall investor relations, large cap’. In 2012, the results of the earlier study also carried by IR Magazine Russia & CIS together with Thomson Reuters Extel placed Gazprom into the list of top three Russian and CIS companies in the investor relations (IR) category.

Adapted from press release by Hannah Priestley-Eaton

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