Nova Chemicals completed the sale of its 26% stake (38.8 millionshares) in Dynegy Corp. last week receiving total after-tax cashproceeds of $605 million, which is about $140 million more than wasexpected when the sale was first announced in August of 1998. Itsold its stake to the public in three packages over the past fivemonths.

The first stage, announced on Feb. 2, drew US$542 million. Stagetwo, announced on April 18, brought in proceeds of US$153 million,and the last sale of about 640,000 Dynegy common shares was made onMay 24 in the open market at an average price of aboutUS$71.63/share, resulting in proceeds of US$45.8 million. The totalpre-tax cash proceeds to Nova Chemicals were US$741 million.

When Nova announced the sale two years ago, company officialssaid the marketplace has assessed “little or no value” to thepetrochemical producer’s investment in the Houston-based marketingand gas processing company. CEO Jeffery Lipton said it was “in thebest interest of Nova shareholders to redeploy the resources.”

After the TransCanada-Nova merger in June 1998, Nova Chemicalswas spun off as a pure commodity chemical company, producingolefins/polyolefins and styrenics.

Rocco Canonica

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