"This is the owner's prerogative at a meeting of the company's board of directors. June has been set as the preliminary date," said Sergei Bogdanchikov, adding that the IPO date had not yet been approved.
At the June meeting, the Rosneft board will approve, in particular, the size of share blocks to be floated on Russian and foreign trading floors, he said.
The Rosneft president earlier said a consortium of four foreign and eight Russian banks was helping the company to prepare the issuance of shares for the stock market. He said the participation of domestic banks in the IPO effort would enable the Russian public to purchase the company's stock.
Gazprombank, a subsidiary of Russian natural gas giant Gazprom, and state-run retail savings bank Sberbank are among the domestic banks preparing the company's initial public offering, Bogdanchikov said.
The head of the Federal Financial Markets Service said Monday Sberbank could purchase Rosneft's shares during the IPO to sell them to the public.
"Sberbank could purchase a part of shares on the stock market immediately after their placement to sell them directly to the bank's clients afterward and no special intermediary will be required for that," Oleg Vyugin said.
The FFMS head said it would be the best option for Rosneft to offer shares both on the domestic and foreign stock markets
Economics Minister German Gref confirmed last week that the IPO, through which Russia's No. 2 crude producer with a market capitalization of more than $25 billion could float shares worth $3bln in Russia and $12-billion on the London Stock Exchange, would take place in the third quarter of 2006.
"Everything remains in force," he said.
Gref also said his ministry had approved late last week the schedule and procedure for the company's upcoming IPO.
Rosneft plans to sell some of its stock to repay a $7.5-billion loan it took to buy 10.74% of shares in Gazprom and thereby increase the state's share in the energy giant to a controlling block.
