Gazprom picks up the pace

The rate of Gazprom stocks increased to 9000 rubles last week. On October 20, the average trade price on the "St. Petersburg" stock market was 9169 rubles ($1.56). In this way, the prices of Gazprom stock on the internal market almost equaled the Gazprom

<BR>The rate of Gazprom stocks increased to 9000 rubles last week. On October 20, the average trade price on the "St. Petersburg" stock market was 9169 rubles ($1.56). In this way, the prices of Gazprom stock on the internal market almost equaled the Gazprom stock prices on the foreign market for October, 1996. Then Gazprom sold 1.15% of its authorized capital for $1.57 per share. More or less the current Gazprom stock prices on the foreign market (approximately $2.8) will remain almost two times higher than on the internal market. The burst in Gazprom stock began in the end of July with stocks priced at 3700 rubles ($0.64). Since that time the Gazprom stocks have grown by almost 2.5 times even during the stagnation of the Russian stock market as a whole. On October 16th and 17th brokers completed more than 100 deals. "We got to a turnover of half a million Gazprom stocks per day. I hope that by the end of October the turnover will be 1 million stocks per day", said executive director of "Saint Petersburg" stock market Vladimir Lebedev.