The investment community on the Moscow Exchange has recorded a sharp decline in the market value of securities of one of the country's largest gold mining enterprises. During the morning trading session, the quotes of PJSC Yuzhuralzoloto Group of Companies rapidly sagged by more than eight percent, hitting a local minimum near fifty-nine kopecks per share. This negative dynamic was a direct consequence of the official publication of disappointing results regarding the state's second attempt to liquidate the nationalized block of assets.

The next round of privatization of the property, which had been seized by court order from the majority shareholder Konstantin Strukov, took place in a Dutch auction format with the option to slash the starting price by half, down to 81.01 billion rubles. According to the agency's regulations, at least two qualified participants who provided a security deposit were required for this procedure to be recognized as legitimate. In practice, the trading platform registered only a single bid from a Moscow-based coal mining structure, Russkie Ugli, headed by Ilya Shpigel. This application was promptly disqualified by the organizers due to the non-compliance of the submitted document package with the strict requirements of current Russian legislation. As a result, Rosimushchestvo was forced to state that the auction for the sale of the comprehensive lot comprising ten enterprises of the UGK group, with a combined estimated value of over 162 billion rubles, had failed once again.

It is worth recalling that the gold miner's securities have been under severe pressure since the summer of last year, when the Prosecutor General's Office successfully challenged the legality of the business consolidation by its former owners. The current auction failure was the second one in May, as the first classical session earlier this month fell through completely due to an absolute lack of buyers willing to deposit over 32 billion rubles as collateral. The situation is further aggravated by the overall financial instability surrounding the issuer, including the March freezes on corporate bank accounts by bailiffs, which were eventually overturned by the Moscow City Court but still managed to severely undermine retail investors' confidence. Speculators fear that the prolonged process of finding a strategic partner and the uncertain status of the nationalized majority stake will continue to exert significant downward pressure on the company's exchange indicators in the medium term.