Network real estate is divided by creditors

The perfume and cosmetics chain Arbat Prestige was unable to agree on a deferred payment to Sberbank and may lose four more premises of its stores, pledged under loans and estimated at $50-60 million. At the beginning of April, the retailer owned 19 real estate properties, of which four were received for debts Uralsib Bank, and Nomos Bank is suing for five more.

Claims from Sberbank against Arbat and Co LLC (operator of the Arbat Prestige network) for 224.278 million and 335.012 million rubles. in the category “Failure to fulfill obligations under contracts (loans)” were registered last Friday in the Moscow Arbitration Court. According to the Arbat & Co. report for the first quarter of 2008, on May 22 the company was supposed to repay the Sberbank loan for 134.288 million rubles. (loan agreement N 611506) and on August 29 - by 402.534 million rubles. (N 71253). In June, the former general director of Arbat Prestige, Roman Khomenko, said in an interview with Kommersant that “in May the company was supposed to repay the Sberbank loan, but, of course, there were no funds for this.” “They met us halfway and, without violating internal protocols and rules, gave us a reprieve,” he explained (see Kommersant on June 24).

Sberbank declined to comment on Friday, but a source close to the bank confirmed that we are talking specifically about credit lines with repayments in May and August. Arbat Prestige will have to repay two more loans from Sberbank by the end of the year - on November 28 for 402.954 million rubles. (agreement No. 711568) and December 10 for 149.576 million rubles. (N 71693).

The Russian Investments group, which now manages Arbat Prestige, planned to extend credit lines from both Sberbank and other creditors, Kirill Ignatiev, chairman of the board of directors of Russian Investments, previously told Kommersant. “But it was not possible to reach an agreement, so Sberbank went to court to obtain real estate as collateral for loans,” a source close to the network explained to Kommersant. According to the Arbat & Co. report, the collateral was four real estate objects (with plots of land) - in Moscow (Sergeya Radonezhsky Street, 2; Bolshaya Cherkizovskaya, 5, building 1) and St. Petersburg (Torzhkovskaya Street, 7; Bolshevikov Avenue, 17) . A broker of the retail real estate market in St. Petersburg assessed the Arbat Prestige stores in the Northern capital at a total of approximately $11 million, and the head of the retail real estate department of DTZ, Dmitry Khechumov, believes that the cost of Moscow properties is $36.2-54.4 million.

Arbat Prestige was founded by Vladimir Nekrasov (arrested in January, accused of tax evasion) in 1989, the first store was opened in 1998. At the beginning of April, it united 95 stores in Russia and Ukraine. Revenue in 2007 - $471.48 million.

Arbat Prestige's reporting states that in the first quarter of 2008, the network owned 19 real estate properties in Moscow and St. Petersburg through its subsidiaries, but since then their number has decreased. The first real estate transaction was the sale of three stores in Moscow under a repo scheme to Uralsib Bank for $81 million to repay the company's bond issue and a loan to the bank. But, as Kirill Ignatiev later told Kommersant, a store in St. Petersburg was also sold under this deal. Five more properties in the city were sold in June and July to undisclosed buyers. According to Roman Khomenko, this deal was initiated by Mr. Nekrasov himself.

Due to the network’s failure to fulfill its obligations, Nomos Bank went to court back in June, which holds five more network facilities in Moscow as collateral (23 Prishvina Street; 65 Varshavskoe Highway, building 2; Mira Avenue, 91, building 3 ) and St. Petersburg (Korovinskoye Shosse, 19; Zeleny Prospekt, 83): his claim in the amount of $27.548 million was sent to Arbat Prestige OJSC (the parent company of the group) and six of its subsidiaries. In September, the Moscow Arbitration Court decided to sell these objects through an auction to pay off the debt to the bank. On October 20, Arbat & Co filed a counterclaim to the bank in order to invalidate the loan agreement. Then a Kommersant source in the company claimed that the lawsuit was initiated to “obtain a temporary reprieve until the network is able to pay off its creditors.”

Irina Kommersant-Parfentyeva

"Arbat Prestige" filed a lawsuit