French Sodexo may transfer business in Kazakhstan to top managers from Russia

The French Sodexo, a food supplier for participants in the Paris Olympics in 2024 and large Russian corporations, including KamAZ, Gazprom Neft, Polyus, may transfer its business in Kazakhstan to the management of top managers who headed its division in the Russian Federation. Previously, they had already gained control over the Russian division of Sodexo, which announced its withdrawal from the country. In the structure of the transaction, experts see an opportunity for the French company to get back direct control over the Russian business in case of a change in the market conditions.

IFCM Group, which received the Russian business of the French corporate catering operator Sodexo last year, registered IFCCM Kazakhstan LLP in June in Almaty, found “Kommersant” in the register of legal entities in the country. The company mentioned the possibility of creating such a structure in Kazakhstan in the report on the results of 2022. According to local job search websites, the new company has already started recruiting.

Founded in 1966 in Marseille, Sodexo began operating in Russia in 1993 and has provided food for many large industrial companies. So, for example, the group managed the corporate canteens of KamAZ, Polyus, Salym Petroleum Development – structures of Gazprom Neft. A year ago, the company announced its withdrawal from the Russian market, transferring the business to the iFCM Group, founded at the same time by top managers of the Sodexo division in Moscow. Now 51% in iFCM belongs to Andrey Zhavoronkov, who headed the Sodexo representative office in Russia in 2018.

The French operator has not announced its withdrawal from Kazakhstan, where it also supplies food to large industrial holdings. According to a Kommersant source in the market, the Sodexo division in the Russian Federation provided many business processes in Kazakhstan. Therefore, he believes, the Kazakh business of Sodexo will be transferred to the new structure of the iFCM Group in the republic. Sodexo and iFCM Group did not provide comment.

Now it is profitable to engage in corporate catering in Kazakhstan, among other things, because a number of Russian companies partially or completely relocated their employees there, says Elena Perepelitsa, CEO of Restcon.

For Sodexo, whose consolidated revenue exceeded €21 billion in 2022, business in Russia and Kazakhstan has always been profitable. So, in 2022, the revenue of the Russian division of the group alone doubled, to almost 14 billion rubles.

According to a Kommersant source, the French operator was forced to transfer its business to the Russian Federation, as it experienced serious pressure in the EU, including due to the fact that it is a food supplier for participants in the Paris Olympics in 2024.

Immediately after the transaction to transfer the business to top managers, their shares in the Russian Sodexo were pledged to the RRDB. This may indicate that management attracted project financing to acquire the company, which usually does not involve the transfer of management control to a third party, says Rimma Malinskaya, partner in the commercial disputes practice at MEF Legal. So Sodexo can retain indirect control of the business.

If the company acts as a guarantor for the loan, then, if necessary, it can repay the obligations at the expense of the proceeds from the transaction and return its shares, the expert explains.

The desire to retain the Russian market may be due to the fact that the corporate catering segment, according to Mikhail Burmistrov, general director of Infoline-Analytics, is becoming more and more attractive, and therefore competition is intensifying. According to various estimates, in 2022 the size of the catering market, which includes the provision of corporate catering, amounted to 500-600 billion rubles.

In Sodexo, their direct competitor in catering for employees of large industrial holdings of the Russian Federation is the company “Partners Noyabrsk”, where 62.39%, according to SPARK, belong to the co-owner of the development Tekta Group Vladislav Mangutov. This company could not be contacted.

There are not so many players in the corporate catering segment of large companies. It is not easy for market participants who have never done this to compete with specialized operators, says Mikhail Burmistrov. One of the difficulties, he said, is the complex system of tenders for state companies to select food suppliers.

Khalil Aminov, Daria Andrianova