The shares were confiscated – Newspaper Kommersant No. 224 (7425) dated 02.12.2022
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The court confiscated from the largest co-owner of the FESCO transport group Ziyavudin Magomedov, who was sentenced on December 1 to 19 years in prison, his 32.5% stake. In fact, the businessman has been deprived of the opportunity to exercise the rights of a shareholder for some time. Now the state will be obliged to sell his stake, lawyers say. Market participants have no doubt that, given the rapid growth in transportation in the Far East, there will be contenders for the asset. Among the most obvious candidates are the Delo group and Rosatom.
The court confiscated shares in the transport holding and in the Summa group from FESCO co-owner Ziyavudin Magomedov, reported “RIA News” with reference to the announced decision of the court. According to the agency, among others, shares in JSC Summa and OOO UK Transport Group FESCO were confiscated. Listing the entire list of confiscated packages took more than half an hour. FESCO declined to comment.
Ziyavudin Magomedov, founder of the Summa group, and his brother ex-senator Magomed Magomedov were arrested in 2018 on charges of creating a criminal community and embezzlement in the implementation of state projects with damage in the amount of 11 billion rubles. The property of the brothers under arrest, in May 2022 at the suit of the Prosecutor General’s Office to the state revenue converted $750 million received from the sale of a controlling stake in NCSP to Transneft. Meshchansky Court of Moscow December 1 sentenced Mr. Magomedov to 19 years in a strict regime colony.
After the arrest of a businessman in FESCO, a shareholder conflict occurred. Against this background, in 2020, two major shareholders sold their stakes of 23.8% and 17.4% to new owners, including Mikhail Rabinovich, co-owner of Loko-Bank. At the end of 2020, the company’s board of directors was completely replaced.
Formally, Mr. Magomedov still owns 32.5% of the parent company of the FESCO group – PJSC FESCO (another 26.5% belongs to Mikhail Rabinovich, 23.8% belongs to his partner Andrey Severilov). Andrey Severilov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of FESCO, stated in November that “as a result of a number of foreign lawsuits, Mr. Magomedov has now lost the right to control the companies that are FESCO shareholders.” The court appointed independent liquidators, he specified, and now, in fact, “Mr. Magomedov no longer controls the companies that are FESCO shareholders, that is, de facto, he has already ceased to be the owner of the company in his part.”
According to lawyers, the state, even after the confiscation of shares, will not become a direct shareholder of FESCO – market participants consider this to be positive news, given the sanctions background and the company’s international profile.
Dmitry Gorbunov, a partner at Rustam Kurmaev and Partners, specifies that the shares and shares confiscated by the court will be in this status (the court indicates their specific legal status in the verdict). “Shares do not automatically become the property of the state,” the lawyer explains. “This is property that, in accordance with the procedure established by law, must be evaluated and subsequently put up for auction. And the funds already received from the sale should subsequently be used to compensate for the damage caused. In a hypothetical situation in which no one will acquire property within the framework of the auction, even in the event of a price reduction, the assets can later be turned into state revenue, most likely for subsequent sale.”
FESCO is a profitable asset operating in areas that not only did not die out with the imposition of sanctions, but, on the contrary, began to develop rapidly, says Kommersant’s interlocutor in the industry, and there will certainly be applicants for Mr. Magomedov’s package. In particular, Sergey Shishkarev’s Delo Group, the largest Russian container operator, has periodically expressed interest in FESCO. However, in September, the company reported that no negotiations were underway.
Rosatom also has a partnership with FESCO in the management of the Vladivostok Commercial Sea Port (VMTP) (it also owns 49% of Delo Group of Companies). However, publicly Rosatom did not express any interest in entering the capital of FESCO (see “Kommersant” dated November 11, 2020), although the Far Eastern authorities announced such a possibility.
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