As Vedomosti has learned, AFK Sistema is taking a direct part in the work of the capital's Consulting Center for Protection from Hostile Takeovers. In the future, Moscow's largest corporation may even provide money for a preventive buyout of shares to an enterprise that has applied to the center.

AFK Sistema owns assets in telecommunications (MGTS, MTS, MTU-Inform, MTU-Intel, Comstar, Telmos, Golden Line, MSS, etc.), insurance (ROSNO), trade (Detsky Mir group of companies), the oil industry (Sistema-Neft), development (Sistema Hals), tourism (VAO Intourist), electronics (Zelenograd concern Scientific Center), mass media (Sistema Mass Media concern), banking (Moscow Bank for Reconstruction and Development), etc. The value of AFK Sistema's assets as of January 1, 2002 was $3.042 billion.

The Moscow City Duma and the city Chamber of Commerce and Industry announced the creation of a Consulting Center for the Protection of Industrial Enterprises from Hostile Takeovers in mid-April. Irina Rukina, Chair of the Duma Committee on Economic Policy, said that this would help stop the uncontrolled process of redistribution of property and repurposing of industrial enterprises in Moscow (approximately 100 enterprises are currently being taken over in Moscow - Vedomosti). It was assumed that the Moscow Government's Department for Economic Security would also participate in the center's work. But then plans changed: as Vedomosti learned, AFK Sistema now plays the main role in the center's work. "The [Consulting] Center operates thanks to AFK," says the center's director, Yevgeny Belov. The holding company provided premises, equipment, and specialists for the center. Moreover, Belov himself, by his own admission, is "concurrently" the director of the Center for Restructuring and Recovery of Enterprises within the department of non-corporate reorganizations of AFK Sistema.

"AFK's strategic interests are concentrated in the Moscow region, and it is interested in establishing order, in particular, in the mergers and acquisitions market," he explains. According to him, AFK plans to participate in the creation of modern industrial zones (so-called technology parks) in Moscow and fears that "by the time these projects are implemented, there will be no enterprises left that could be interested in participating in them."

True, an employee of the Moscow Experimental Knitwear Factory, whose management fears a takeover by minority shareholders, complains that the center has not helped his factory in any way. However, Evgeny Belov says that in the future the center will also help in finding financing, for example, for the consolidation of shares. "If the director of the [taken over] enterprise comes to an agreement with AFK Sistema, then AFK can finance the buyout of shares taken over by the aggressor," he explains. "When the aggressor understands that AFK has started helping the victim, the situation immediately changes radically. This is one of the most influential structures in Moscow."

It was not possible to obtain comments from other AFK representatives on Friday regarding participation in the project. But the Moscow City Duma supports such cooperation. An employee of Irina Rukina's office says that corporate wars are an expensive undertaking, but no one is forcing victims to seek financing from AFK. And the head of the Moscow government's economic security department, Alexander Korsak, notes that if commercial organizations participate in the center's work, this must be known to potential "clients" and such an organization should not work under the guise of the Moscow authorities. In addition, on the instructions of the mayor, the department opened its own "hotline" for victims of takeovers.

Director of the investment company "Your Financial Trustee" Vasily Boyko believes that the participation of a multi-profile holding in the work of this center may alert potential clients of the center. The director of a Moscow motor depot, which is currently fighting off takeovers, told Vedomosti about this on condition of anonymity. According to him, he will never disclose the state of affairs at his enterprise to a company that itself may act as a customer of takeovers. And the top manager of a small clothing factory, on the contrary, would be glad if someone helped his enterprise sell part of its shares to an investor ready to develop production.

"System" against takeovers