Deals on the nerves

Potanin and Prokhorov divided everything except the most important thing

Interros CEO Vladimir Potanin and Onexim Group President Mikhail Prokhorov have finally agreed on the division of assets worth more than $11 billion managed by their joint fund KM Invest. Yesterday, Interos and Onexim announced in a press release that they had signed agreements under which Interros would acquire Mr. Prokhorov's 50 percent stake in KM Invest. And Onexim buys 27.5% of Open Investments and 91% of the insurance company Soglasie from KM Invest. The management company of Rosbank (it no longer manages the bank of the same name) and a number of geological exploration assets also come under the control of Mr. Prokhorov’s group. The transaction amount is not disclosed. Onexim only noted that its “assessment is fair.” All operations are planned to be completed by May 15. However, the fate of the largest joint assets around which a serious scandal unfolded - Norilsk Nickel and Polyus Gold - is still not completely clear. However, as a source close to the merged company RUSAL said yesterday, everything will become clear on April 23: on this day, the deal on Mr. Prokhorov’s sale of a stake in Norilsk Nickel to an aluminum company, the main owner of which is businessman Oleg Deripaska, will be finally completed.

Mr. Potanin will now solely control about 39% of the shares of Rosbank, 100% of the shares of Profmedia, 100% of the shares of Interros Estate, 98.1% of the shares of Rosa Khutor, as well as 8.1% of the shares of Norilsk Nickel ", 7.4% shares of Polyus Gold. A Onexim representative emphasized that plans to sell Mr. Potanin a stake in Polyus “are not currently being considered.” “We managed to overcome all the contradictions and conclude a mutually beneficial deal. I hope that the completion of such a large-scale restructuring of the joint business will have a positive impact on the business climate in our country,” Mr. Potanin is quoted as saying in the message. Mr. Prokhorov, in turn, noted: “These agreements allow us in the near future to obtain direct participation in companies of strategic interest to us and focus on implementing our own projects.”

Thus, so far the businessmen have not been able to divide only their two largest assets - Norilsk Nickel and Polyus Gold. As you know, Mr. Prokhorov in November last year agreed to sell 25% plus one share of Norilsk Nickel to RUSAL for 11% of the shares of the aluminum company and money (about 5-6 billion dollars). Later, representatives of RUSAL spoke about their desire to merge with Norilsk Nickel. However, in February of this year, the management of the nickel giant began negotiations on a merger with the Metalloinvest holding, owned by businessmen Alisher Usmanov, Vasily Anisimov and Andrey Skoch.

According to experts, if Messrs. Prokhorov and Deripaska fail to reach an agreement, then Messrs. Potanin and Prokhorov will divide the business in accordance with the original agreements: Norilsk Nickel will go to Mr. Potanin, and energy assets and Polyus Gold will go to Mr. Prokhorov. In early April, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Interros, General Director of KM Invest Andrei Klishas reported that Interros was ready to consider the possibility of purchasing Mr. Prokhorov’s share in Norilsk Nickel if it received documentary evidence that his deal with RUSAL did not take place.

While the deal is Prokhorov and RUSAL is not completed. Recently, information appeared on the market that Mr. Prokhorov wants to abandon it altogether due to RUSAL’s violation of joint agreements. The bottom line is that a syndicate of Western banks, which must provide RUSAL with a loan of $4.5 billion to pay for the deal, allegedly put forward a demand for the aluminum company to conduct an IPO before November 2009. If this does not happen, banks may demand early repayment of the debt. In this case, Mr. Prokhorov also reserves the right to demand the sale of his share. However, in this case, RUSAL may simply not have enough funds to pay the businessman.

However, as a high-ranking manager close to RUSAL said yesterday, “a week ago the aluminum company re-signed an agreement (with Mr. Prokhorov or a syndicate of banks, he did not specify. - Ed. ), and already next week on Wednesday the deal with Mr. Mr. Prokhorov will be completed." However, he did not comment on the new terms of the agreement. Earlier, representatives of RUSAL stated that the deal would be completed by the end of April, and Mr. Deripaska in one of his last interviews said that by the end of this week.

Irina TSYRULEVA