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Despite contrarians who claimed that a mammoth new Petrobras share offering would be under-subscribed, Brasil's national oil giant has sold at least $70 billion usd worth of stock to be used to double output within a decade by tapping new deep water offshore fields in the world's biggest capital sale ever.
“In Petrobras, you have an obvious growth profile,” said NYC researcher Robbert van Batenburg. “They face growing pains while other guys struggle to replace reserves,” he said.
However, some investors still feel that the sale will lead to greater governmental control over Petrobras. Brasil increased its stake to 48% from 40% after the share sale, including stakes held by state-owned banks. Before the sale, the government also controlled the company 55.6 % of voting shares.
Mark Mobius of Templeton Asset Management is strongly criticizing the sale.“The entire Petrobras issue is an abomination and a terrible violation of shareholder rights. We may be entering an IPO bubble. It means that people are just not looking at the values and irrationally buying these things.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-24/mobius-calls-petrobras-offering-an-abomination-may-represent-a-bubble-.html
