"Kommersant"
June 2, 2003

Trade of RBC shares halted due to price upsurge limit

Prior to a weekend, the Russian exchanges RTS and MICEX saw a sharp rise in shares of RBC Information Systems. As a result, trade of these securities was halted for an hour at the RTS.

The holding RBC Information System, which includes the information agency RosBusinessConsulting, conducted its IPO in April 2002. The company floated 16 percent of its shares at $0.83 per share. Aton Capital acted as an underwriter of this IPO.

Trade of RBC shares was halted on the RTS exchange at about 1 p.m. on Friday, when a deal on RBC shares for $9,500 was registered, which was 13.1 percent more than the price for these shares at the opening on the same day. Since this was the only deal that Friday, the opening price was calculated on prices of the previous trade. No more deals were made with RBC shares after trade was resumed at the RTS. Meanwhile, trade of RBC shares was not halted on MICEX where the price for these securities surged by 8.14 percent and the volume of trade reached about $300,000.

Stock traders did not provide unanimous comments on this situation. According to Dmitry Sychyov, an analyst with Aton Capital, "the shares met huge demand after a long pause." He noted that they made the deal at the RTS and the number of deals on MICEX was several times higher than usual. "I saw demand from both domestic and western investors." According to the analyst, demand for RBC shares was pushed by the company's participation in the international investment conference held the previous week and information about its plans to issue ADRs.