Kazakh Samruk-Kazyna Denies Report of Buying UniCredit Stake
January 25, 2012, 9:23 AM ESTBy Nariman Gizitdinov
(Updates with comments from Samruk-Kazyna in second paragraph.)
Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Kazakhstan’s National Wellbeing Fund Samruk-Kazyna denied a report in Italy’s il Giornale newspaper that it had acquired almost 5 percent of UniCredit SpA, Italy’s biggest bank.
The report that Samruk-Kazyna “acquired a stake in UniCredit SpA is untrue,” fund spokesman Yuriy Cherkasov said by telephone from the Kazakh capital Astana today. Samruk-Kazyna has contacted il Giornale and demanded that the newspaper run a correction, the fund said in a Twitter Inc. posting.
In its report, il Giornale also said Italy’s central bank, Banca d’Italia, had been informed about the operation. It didn’t say where it got the information.
UniCredit pared gains following the Samruk-Kazyna statement after touching an intraday high of 2.962 euros. The stock was trading at 2.858 euros at 1:19 p.m. in Milan, up 11.7 percent on the day.
--Editors: Patrick G. Henry, Peter Chapman
To contact the reporter on this story: Nariman Gizitdinov in Almaty at ngizitdinov@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net
