Annual Reports and Financial Results Reporting

The PBN Company works with clients to issue timely and accurate press releases to announce quarterly and annual financial results. We also help clients prepare for and conduct webcasts, conference calls, in-person briefings and other outreach activities for media, analysts and investors on financial results and material financial developments. We also have extensive experience preparing highly effective annual reports, most recently for companies as diverse as Alfa Bank, Basic Element, Chagala Group, DTEK, Institute of Contemporary Development, Pharmacy Chain 36.6, Rolf Group of Companies, Rosneft, Sberbank, and Western NIS Fund.

Mergers & Acquisitions

The PBN Company provides strategic communications services, including outreach to the financial media, analysts and investors, to support M&A transactions. One of the highest profile transactions was the 2003 announcement by BP, Alfa Group and Access-Renova to combine their interests in Russia to create TNK-BP, the third largest oil and gas company in the country, valued at more than $6 billion. In 2008, the firm was involved in two of the largest M&A transactions in Russia: Enel’s $4.billion acquisition of wholesale power generator OGK-5 and Pepsi’s $1.4 billion acquisition of the leading Russian juice maker Lebedyansky.  The PBN Company has advised clients on numerous other high-profile M&A transactions, including those involving Baltika, Amtel-Vredestein, Pharmacy Chain 36.6, and Mittal Steel-Kryvorizhstal.

IPOs

The PBN Company provides financial communications services to Russian, Ukrainian, Kazakh and other CIS clients preparing for IPOs. Our role includes helping our clients and their advisors to prepare fact-based and persuasive investment stories and to receive widespread positive attention from the media, sell-side analysts and the investment community as a whole. Specific activities for clients preparing for an IPO include developing key messages and detailed Q&As, backgrounding and disseminating information to financial journalists, preparing investor and other presentations, obtaining investor and media feedback and preparing for post-offering investor relations activities. PBN’s recent IPO experience includes Bank St. Petersburg, Ferrexpo, MMK, M.video and Raspadskaya.

Investor Relations

Maintaining credibility with a company's investors and shareholders plays a critical role in building market confidence and achieving key financial objectives. The PBN Company provides a range of investor relations and shareholder communications services to our clients, including preparing for and managing the challenges of investor communications post-IPO, establishing internal investor relations departments and creating secondary market supports. We work with our clients to assess and understand the make-up of their shareholder base, so that the company can target communications and investment strategies. The PBN Company helps our clients prepare for annual and other shareholder meetings as well as conduct regular, ongoing communications with shareholders. For example, The PBN Company organized and managed a New York investor conference for Lukoil in connection with its 10th anniversary, which was attended by more than 300 investors.  The firm has also provided news media and other communications support for Investor Conferences sponsored by Renaissance Capital in New York, London, Moscow, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and elsewhere around the world.

Proxy Fights

The firm has helped to manage high-profile shareholder disputes for our clients involving the proxy fights and other shareholder communications. An example is the successful work that The PBN Company conducted for Baltic Beverage Holdings, a joint venture between Scottish & Newcastle and Carlsberg, to win shareholder approval to consolidate four breweries into Baltika Breweries. The firm was retained after shareholders initially rejected an initial merger proposal, based on a campaign organized by a minority shareholder. The PBN Company provided litigation support and shareholder communications to win approval for a new merger plan.

Privatizations

The PBN Company helps position companies effectively for participation in government privatizations and other tenders. In 2005, we provided corporate positioning, strategic communications and government relations services to Mittal Steel, the world’s largest and most successful global steel company, in its successful effort to acquire the steel producer Kryvorizhstal from the Ukrainian government.

Strategic Business Partnership Development

The PBN Company has worked with a number of clients — ranging from aviation, real estate, consumer goods and retail to the financial sector — to assist them in developing and announcing strategic business partnerships.  For example, we worked with Bank Standard of Azerbaijan to develop business relationships with Western banks and other financial institutions. In 2005, we announced a unique strategic alliance between Rostik Group, one of Russia’s leading restaurant companies, and Yum! Brands, the global quick-service restaurant industry leader. Under this unprecedented business partnership, the two companies will build more than 300 co-branded KFC/Rostik restaurants in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union over three years.

Capital Markets Development

The firm has extensive experience in supporting the development of capital markets in transition economies, including Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Moldova. We have provided, for example, strategic communications and investor relations services to the Federal Service for the Financial Markets of Russia, the country’s watchdog agency for the financial markets. Under a contract with the World Bank, The PBN Company highlighted the agency’s achievements in instituting and enforcing corporate governance, collective investment and investor protection policies to target audiences in both domestic and international markets. We also assisted the agency in its outreach to defrauded investors in the mid-1990s, in the aftermath of the collapse of a number of pyramid and other illegal financial schemes. For six years (1996-2002), we managed a nationwide program, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), to assist the Government of Ukraine in educating Ukrainians on its various economic reform programs, including mass privatization, post-privatization, social sector restructuring, capital markets development and housing reform.

Economic Development and Foreign Investment Promotion

The PBN Company has also conducted economic development and foreign investment promotion for Russia, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Dubai and Moldova. In 2005 and 2006, we conducted a survey of current and potential foreign investors in Russia for the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade and Foreign Investment Advisory Council (FIAC). The purpose of the survey was to identify both opportunities and barriers to investment, so that government and industry could work together on key policy initiatives. Also in 2005, we helped the Foreign Investors Council of Latvia prepare a strategic plan for long-term economic development. In 1999, under a contract with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the firm served as the Secretariat for the Foreign Investors Council (FIC) of Kazakhstan and organized working meetings between President Nursultan Nazarbayev, cabinet officials and foreign investors on legal, operational, reputation management and tax issues.