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VTB sells Swiss subsidiary to Gazprombank
Chairman of the Board of VTB Andrei Kostin announced yesterday that he intends to sell the Swiss subsidiary Russische Kommerzial Bank (RKB) to Gazprom structures by the end of this year. According to him, representatives of the concern are now assessing the bank. Mr. Kostin did not say who exactly the buyer will be - Gazprom or Gazprombank, which is leaving the group. Most likely, the new owner of RKB will be the banking structure of the gas monopolist, which has long been closely cooperating with VTB’s subsidiary in Switzerland. They are still partners in the investment fund IDF Anlagegesellschaft, which was the founder of the Centrex group trading Russian gas in Austria. If the deal goes through, Gazprombank will strengthen its European business, and VTB will get rid of unnecessary assets, as well as non-core investments in the gas business.In April 2004, Gazprombank (a few months after the appointment of Andrei Akimov as president, who had previously headed Roszagranbank in Austria) established the IDF fund in Liechtenstein, which, in turn, became the controlling shareholder of Centrex Group Holding, registered in Cyprus. Apparently, this structure was supposed to become a partner of Gazprom's sales companies in European end-use markets (primarily in Austria, Switzerland and Italy). In order to avoid accusations of Centrex's affiliation with Gazprom, in 2005 Gazprombank even completely withdrew from IDF shareholders. Then 80% of the shares were sold to RKB, and the remaining 20% to the structure of businessman Robert Novikowski, a long-time partner of Mr. Akimov and his associate Alexander Medvedev (who has served as head of Gazprom Export since 2003).
Subsequently, however, this deal had to be terminated. In addition, most of Centrex's projects to enter European markets failed. In particular, plans to supply Russian gas to Italy through Central Energy Italien Gas Holding (where Centrex was to receive 41% of the shares, Gazprom Export - 25.1%, and Italian businessman Bruno Mentasti - 33%) remained only paper. And annually up to 3 billion cubic meters of Russian gas will be sold in the Apennines by Gazprom’s 100 percent “granddaughter” - Gazprom Marketing & Trading. The Hungarian division of Centrex also failed to provide much competition to the trader Emfez (owned by Ukrainian entrepreneur, co-owner of RosUkrEnergo Dmitry Firtash) and practically does not sell gas on this market.
In fact, Centrex remained in the Gazprom-related business only in Austria, where it received the right to resell up to 300 million cubic meters of Russian gas per year.