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Petropavlovsk swaps out billionaire shareholder

Roman Trotsenko has bought Kenges Rakishev's stake in the Russian gold miner
July 16, 2019

The driving force behind Petropavlovsk’s (POG) ‘back to the future’-style board change last year has sold out of the company.

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Kazakh billionaire Kenges Rakishev has passed his 22 per cent holding on to a Russian billionaire, Roman Trotsenko, who owns the Aeon Corporation and through it airports and major developments in his home country. 

Mr Rakishev bought into Petropavlovsk in late 2017 via his investment vehicle Fincraft when the shares were trading at around 5p, and was soon agitating for change, voting with a mysterious shareholder group to bring back Pavel Maslovskiy in June last year. He said in a statement he was selling for “commercial reasons” and would redirect the cash to other holdings. The sale comes a month after a fellow player in the board replacement drama told Investors Chronicle there was a vigorous investigation by the Takeover Panel into whether Mr Rakishev and the other two shareholder groups, CABS Platform (now known as Everest Alliance) and Slevin had worked together. 

Mr Rakishev has one seat on the board, filled by Bektas Mukazhanov. 

The new largest shareholder Mr Trotsenko already has an interest in mining through private gold and antimony producer GeoProMining, which also counts fellow rich-lister Siman Povarenkin and SberBank as owners.  A spokesman said he was looking forward to “making [his] expertise available to the board”.