The auction is set for September 29 and will lead off with a starting price of $1.928 billion.
A source close to the organisers of the auction said that no bidder to take part in the auction had come forward by Friday evening.
The RFFI refused to comment on this information. "Journalists will get a list of auction participants directly before the tendering begins," said RFFI official spokesman Vladimir Zelentsov.
The main contender for the stake has been the company ConocoPhillips. Promsvyazvbank, too, announced its intention to take part in the auction. Its shareholders endorsed the decision. Another known bidder is IFD Kapital, mentioned by LUKoil head Vagit Alekperov.
The RFFI expects the final selling price of LUKoil will be comparable with the market price of company shares at the moment of the auction or even higher. The starting price was fixed, proceeding from the share price of $29.83.
Following trading on Moscow Inter-Bank Currency Exchange (MICEX) on September 24, LUKoil shares closed at 916 roubles per share (1 dollar is equal to 29.22 roubles), and on the Russian Trading System (RTS), at $31.45 per share.
At the end of July, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov signed a decision to sell the state's LUKoil stake in the third quarter of 2004 at an open auction as a single lot (to one investor). All in all, 64,638,729 ordinary shares are to be sold at a nominal price of 0.025 rouble per unit.
