“Geotech” went to the fund – Newspaper Kommersant No. 68 (7513) dated 04/19/2023
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As Kommersant expected, the buyer of one of the largest Russian seismic companies Geotek from Trust Bank was the structure of Gazprombank – ZPIF Gazprombank-Nefrit. This ZPIF is in trust management of AAA Capital Management JSC, while 100% of Geoteka’s votes are controlled by Gazprombank, according to the statements of one of Geoteka’s structures.
As a result of its sale by Trust at the end of last year, Geotech Seismic Exploration was transferred to the closed-end investment fund Gazprombank-Nefrit, which is in trust management of AAA Capital Management JSC. This follows from the statements of a number of subsidiaries of the seismic company (Kommersant has it). They also indicate that 100% of Geotek’s votes now belong to Gazprombank. Trust and Gazprombank declined to comment.
Geotek is one of the largest seismic companies in the Russian Federation, operating in Western and Eastern Siberia, the Timan-Pechora and Volga-Urals provinces. Customers are the largest Russian oil companies, it is also a backbone enterprise for the geological industry of the Russian Federation. However, the company’s position is worsened by a high debt burden, as well as a decrease in investment in the exploration industry.
The use of closed-end mutual funds allows you to hide the owners of the business, says Ekaterina Makeeva, partner and head of the sanctions practice at A-Pro. She adds that the owners of LLC shares can be determined through the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, and shareholders – according to extracts from the register or depo account. But if the ownership is carried out through a closed-end mutual investment fund, then the owners of the fund’s shares, indirectly owning the same shares and shares, are not disclosed. The question of whether the shareholders are “beneficial owners”, information about which is subject to disclosure, is debatable, she believes. In addition, fund management companies are not payers of income tax – the tax is withheld when income is paid to shareholders, the lawyer adds.
The fact that Trust sold Geotek to the structure of Gazprombank was reported by Kommersant last year, but then the parties did not comment on this information. The deal took place in the fall, and in December, the head of Trust, Alexander Sokolov, announced the sale, describing the buyer as “a high-quality profile investor who has enough financial and industry resources to both keep and develop the company.” Trust received Geotech at the end of 2020 for 4.9 billion rubles, having acquired the asset from FC Otkritie, once the largest creditor of the seismic company. FC Otkrytiye has owned Geotek since 2017, and before that it was part of IGSS, a company created on the basis of the seismic assets of Nikolai Levitsky, Integra, and the assets of the American oilfield services company Schlumberger.
Kommersant’s interlocutors noted that after the management of Geotek was transferred to Gazprombank, it would be supervised by former top managers of another seismic company, Rosgeologiya. So, since October, Geotek has been headed by Sergey Suchkov, who until 2019 served as the first deputy head of Rosgeology during the period when the company was headed by Roman Panov. Both top managers left the company in 2019 amid a scandal with Ruslan Gorring, deputy head of Rosgeo. Then Mr. Panov became the first vice-president of Gazprombank.
According to Kommersant’s interlocutors, given the high debt load of Geoteka, it could be sold for a symbolic price, which allowed Trust to get rid of the troubled asset. In recent years, Geotek’s market share has been declining amid a decrease in investment in exploration, said Dmitry Kasatkin from Kasatkin Consulting. He connects business growth opportunities with the fact that the current owner will be able to help with new orders, as well as with the need to replenish the reserves of oil and gas companies at the expense of new regions on land.
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