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Tag: PE Sheet Senior managers of a top Russian petrochemicals company Sibur Holding JSC are leading a management buyout of the firm from the country's oil and gas giant Gazprom.Gazprom's banking arm, JSC Gazprombank, has agreed to sell a 50% stake plus one share of Sibur to Hidron Holdings. This is the company formed by the managers and led by Sibur president Dmitry Konov for the buyout.The deal will be worth in total $5.4bn (€3.5bn) Reuters news agency reported.In a surprise move last year the Gazprom group transferred its petrochemicals operations, described by it as a non-core asset, to Gazprombank which holds 70% of the shares.Gazprom said it wanted to focus on oil, gas and power production. But Sibur is still heavily reliant on gas supplies from Gazprom.The deal comprised payment by the buyout consortium of a cash sum of 53.5bn roubles (€1.4bn) along with 25% of Sibur's net profit for 2007, and its assumption of Sibur's substantial debts.The cash component will be split into 16.6bn roubles (€452m) that should be paid immediately, another 11.9bn (€321m) payable within three months, with the rest to be paid within three years, Reuters reported.Apart from Konov, the management group included Sibur's senior executive vice president Vladimir Razumov; economic and finance vice president Alexei Filippovsky; organisational issues vice president Vitaly Baranov and vice president Mikhail Karisalov.Financial backing for the buyout will be provided by New York based investment group United Capital Partners LLC.Moscow-based Sibur Holding has 34 plants across Russia producing petrochemicals, synthetic rubber, vehicle tyres, fertilisers and polymers, including polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, PVC and PET.It also produces a variety of downstream processed plastic products such as packaging, automotive parts, PVC and PE sheet and consumer goods.Sibur has just reported record annual sales to December 2007 of 143bn roubles (€3.8bn). It is currently carrying out or planning a number of major capital investments including several significant polymer capacity expansion projects. Investments for 2008 total more than 40bn roubles (€1.1bn).