MOSCOW, February 28 (RIA Novosti) – Shares of Russian steel and coking coal giant Mechel plummeted nearly 25 percent in trading Friday in Moscow.
At 11:36 a.m. the Moscow Exchange halted trading in the stock for 30 minutes after a collapse of more than 40 percent Friday morning sent the shares to an all-time low.
Following the resumption of trading, the stock regained some ground, but at closing Friday shares were still off 24.6 percent from opening.
In a statement on its website, the Moscow-based company said that it considers the decline purely speculative in nature and that its financial situation is stable, adding that it has called on the Central Bank to investigate the incident.
A Central Bank official said that, following standard procedures, an investigation would be opened to look for signs of market manipulation.
Analysts saw no obvious reason for the slump, but suggested that stockholders were worried about the company’s excessive debt load.
Late last year Russian media reported that the company had delayed staff salaries as it struggled to manage nearly $10 billion in debt.
Friday’s slide was not the first dramatic price tumble in the company’s history.
In November, a similar collapse saw shares crash more than 40 percent with no apparently significant public news, leaving analysts scratching their heads.
In 2008, critical comments by then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sent the company’s shares plunging and cut its majority owner Igor Zyuzin’s net worth in half by over $5 billion.
Mechel employs more than 80,000 people and has production facilities throughout Russia as well as in Ukraine, Lithuania and the United States.
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