The cost and the date of selling the municipally owned share of the Metalist Stadium to the new owner of FC Metalist will be announced in the second half of January 2013, Head of Kharkiv Regional State Administration Mykhailo Dobkin has said.

"We [with Serhiy Kurchenko, the new owner of FC Metalist] have come to full mutual understanding and the owner said he wanted to buy the state owned and municipally owned share of the stadium. We will hold a meeting in Kharkiv after January 18-19 to discuss the issue and I think we will agree on specific figures and the date of concluding the agreement," Dobkin said at a press briefing on Wednesday.

Dobkin assumed that the cost of the city's share of the stadium would be estimated by not less than $70 million, the sum that was spent from budgets of various levels on the restoration of the stadium.

Dobkin also said that the new owner of FC Metalist is likely to be the only pretender to buying the stadium.

He added that the money received from selling the stadium would be spent on the most important social projects in Kharkiv and the region. The list of the projects will be formed later.

On December 24, it was reported that the Gas Ukraine group of companies reached an agreement on the acquisition of FC Metalist Kharkiv from businessman Oleksandr Yaroslavsky. On the same day Yaroslavsky said that he had resigned as president of FC Metalist Kharkiv and transferred the commitments on its financing to another investor.

On December 25, the new owner of FC Metalist Kharkiv, Serhiy Kurchenko, stated that he intends to win the Ukrainian Premier League within three years and is ready to buy Kharkiv municipal authorities' share in the Metalist Stadium.