Jan Mladek, the deputy finance minister, said yesterday that the banking privatization steering committee will likely approve on Monday the release of the KB information memorandum to potential investors. This would correspond to the government’s KB privatization schedule. However, it is still not clear whether the memorandum will include a specific government commitment on guarantees to the future KB buyer (i.e., the size and nature of the guarantees), or whether there will be rather a vague statement of the government’s willingness to provide such guarantees at a later stage in the privatization. The deputy finance minister said this issue is still subject to negotiation, but a ministry of finance spokesman suggested that the vague-statement version would be adopted, and that the exact size of the guarantees would be determined by the Cabinet at a later stage. KB’s stock is sensitive to the issue of state pre-privatization assistance, market expectations are high (too high, in our view), and the stock could be quite volatile in the coming weeks as a result.
(Ondřej Daťka)