Bankruptcy lawsuit filed against OBI network structure

On January 11, Pro Factor filed a lawsuit against OBI Franchising Center, a member of the OBI network, to declare it bankrupt. She also posted messages on Fedresurs about her intention to file similar applications with two more firms – “Do it yourself” and “Do it yourself northwest.”

Pro Factor is part of the Conomica debt platform, it specializes in the acquisition and collection of bad receivables, its CEO Kirill Panov explained to Vedomosti. According to him, at the end of October 2022, she bought back the network’s debt obligations in the amount of 25.6 million rubles from one of the OBI suppliers, which were confirmed by the decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court. An OBI representative said that the amount owed to Pro Factor is several times lower than the group’s daily earnings, and is not critical for the company. In the next few days, the network intends to make payment.

An application for bankruptcy is often filed in order to motivate a solvent debtor to fulfill its obligations, explains Boris Bashilov, lawyer and senior partner at Bashilov, Noskov and Partners law firm. This is actually confirmed by Panov. According to him, OBI has the ability to repay the debt formed due to external circumstances. Bashilov believes that in this case the case will not be moved, but it is stipulated that a significant number of existing claims can cause a “domino effect”, when all creditors, having seen such a statement, will already apply with their statements, and the debtor may simply not be able to cope with them. . An analysis of the financial condition and level of solvency of the group’s legal entities revealed a negative trend caused by the shutdown of stores for 1.5 months after the start of the special military operation, adds Panov. The subsequent economic changes and internal corporate dispute led to an increase in the litigation load, by the end of 2022, about 200 claims for 1.4 billion rubles were filed against it.

The OBI network has been operating in Russia since 2003. It has been unprofitable for the past few years. In 2021, the legal entity of the network in Russia with a total revenue of 54.9 billion rubles. received 2.47 billion net loss. In addition, the monthly downtime in the spring of last year, when the German owner tried to force the local management to close the chain’s stores and turned off software in offices, warehouses and stores, cost the company 3-4 billion in lost revenue, Infoline CEO Ivan Fedyakov told Vedomosti.

At the beginning of 2022, the OBI network included 27 hypermarkets, now there are 25, according to the company’s website. In early December last year, one of the outlets located in the Mega Khimki shopping center was destroyed by fire.

OBI changed owners three times last year. Since December 2022, Modul-2 LLC (90%) and businessman Valid Korchagin (10%) have become the new owners of the group. The first belongs to Marina Midova, President of the Association of Wholesale and Retail Markets. The latter was created by companies associated with the Sindika holding of the ex-president of Kabardino-Balkaria and senator Arsen Kanokov. As for Korchagin, he owns a 21.25% stake in the Arena company, in the card of which the website of Stars Coffee coffee houses is indicated in SPARK-Interfax. This is a former Russian business of the American Starbucks chain: this year Sindika bought it along with restaurateur Anton Pinsky and rapper Timur Yunusov (known as Timati).