Londoners put in word on OMV-MOL affair - extended

The greatest difficulty for OMV is that cooperation from MOL’s management is necessary to remove the existing restriction of maximal voting shares held in one hand. Creating a unified OMV-MOL group is likely to be a long process and the success cannot be guaranteed, the analysts added. Standard & Poor’s rated MOL shares to BBB-; reflecting the company’s good position at the Central Eastern European refinery market, its strong and “resistant” profitability and reasonable asset portfolio. On the downside, the financial profile of MOL was only considered “average”; because of the increased debt level due to the recent purchase of own shares.

Financial Competition Office (PSZÁF) OMV Ft 25 million ($141,400) for violating rules on influencing the market when it made its offer for MOL earlier this week. OMV’s conditional offer of Ft 32,000 per MOL share on Tuesday misled investors, the PSZÁF said in a statement on Friday. “This intention however - when interpreting the whole of the declaration of intent - does not present a real and realistic series of steps to shareholders based on which they could make well-founded investment decisions,” it said. “That is because the payment of the ‘offer price’ and so in fact the making of a public purchase offer is tied to several ... conditions,” it said on its www.pszaf.hu website. (Gazdasági Rádió)