OREANDA-NEWS. December 7, 2007. At an auction for selling power sales companies of OJSC RAO UES of Russia on December 4, Centre Region Invest LLC, a company acting on behalf of IES-Holding, purchased the shareholdings of OJSC Kirovenergosbyt put up for sale (48.17 percent), IES-Holding's press service reported. The starting price of the stock in the power sales company equal to the market value determined on the basis of the opinion of a consortium of independent appraisers amounted to 300 million roubles. The purchase price as a result of the auction amounted to 302.2 million roubles.

OJSC Kirovenergosbyt is located in the area where OJSC Territorial Generating Company No. 5 (TGC-5) (IES-Holding owns 46.125 percent of this company's shares) operates. Thus, this asset is of strategic importance for IES-Holding.

Mikhail Slobodin, President of IES-Holding, noted that the acquisition of Kirovenergosbyt shares is a strategic and long-term investment, "consistently and carefully assessing economic advisability, IES-Holding enters the retail segment, concentrating mostly on territories where generating companies controlled by the holding company have operations".The interest of IES-Holding in assets of power sales companies is due to its development strategy targeted at shaping a vertically integrated power corporation working in three key areas: generation, retail, and infrastructure.