The column is led by Dmitry Polonsky

// COLLECT

The first victim of last year's crisis in the aviation market, Krasnoyarsk Airlines (Krasair), was declared bankrupt. As part of bankruptcy proceedings, her property will be sold and the company will be liquidated. The bankruptcy proceedings in Krasair will last six months; first-priority creditors have the greatest chance of collecting debts. Among them are Ilyushin Finance Co. (it was she who filed a bankruptcy claim in December 2008, demanding the return of 92 million rubles for leasing aircraft), Finservice (demanding 5.2 million rubles also for leasing), LLC TD Fuel supply for airports" (TOAP, requires 29 million rubles for fuel). But it is already clear that there is not enough money to pay off all debts, reaching 28 billion rubles: 80% of the airline’s property is pledged against loans, material assets are in unsatisfactory technical condition. The state, contrary to its promises, did not take part in resolving the problems of the carrier’s creditors. Along with the problems of Krasair, complications emerged last week at the largest air carrier, Aeroflot, and some of these complications arose with the participation of the state and also in the Krasnoyarsk direction. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) considered that Aeroflot, by occupying a dominant position in the air transportation market on the Krasnoyarsk-Norilsk-Krasnoyarsk route and by arbitrarily setting a tariff for these transportations, violated the “established pricing procedure.” The FAS stated that Aeroflot raised the tariff to 36 thousand rubles, although the current maximum tariff is 8.5 thousand rubles. in one direction, and ordered to transfer to the budget the income received “as a result of violation of antimonopoly legislation.” Aeroflot justifies the high cost of tariffs by the strong dependence on the cost of fuel in the region. However, the FAS decision creates a precedent that may apply to other routes of the carrier and to other airlines. Let us note that the net profit of the Aeroflot group for 2008, as it became known last week, decreased by 88.2% compared to a year ago ($313.4 million in 2007) - to $37 million. The largest loss for the group came from subsidiaries: CJSC Aeroflot Cargo and OJSC Terminal.

// FROM THE CENTER OF THE FIELD

Sistema exchanged Svyazinvest

The state has agreed with AFK Sistema to buy out the corporation's blocking stake in the Svyazinvest holding, according to a letter sent by the Minister of Communications and Mass Media Igor Shchegolev to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The main owner of AFK, Vladimir Yevtushenkov, proposed to Putin to buy out AFK's stake in Svyazinvest back in October last year, but the structure of the deal became clear only now. According to the Kommersant newspaper, the essence of the agreement is that AFK gives 25% plus one share of Svyazinvest (the state owns 75% minus one share) and 50% of the cellular operator Sky Link (the remaining 50% belongs to the structures of the Danish lawyer Jeffrey Galmond), in return the corporation receives 23% of Moscow City Telephone Network OJSC (66% of the voting shares of the network are owned by Comstar-UTS, a subsidiary of AFK Sistema); in addition, its debt to Sberbank in the amount of 26 billion is written off rub. Sistema's debt obligations are assumed by Vnesheconombank, which will subsequently receive 25% plus one share of Svyazinvest. The letter also states that “the difference between the assets being exchanged is approximately 9 billion rubles, so AFK agreed to transfer additional telecommunications assets.” Troika Dialog analyst Evgeny Golosnoy believes that the deal is beneficial to both parties: the state got rid of the shareholder in the person of AFK and can now calmly begin the reorganization of Svyazinvest.

// REFEREE TEAM

Chigirinsky's property came under arrest

The UK High Court, at the request of VTB, imposed a security arrest on the development projects and real estate of entrepreneur Shalva Chigirinsky. Even the businessman's collection of antique watches, which included Faberge pieces, was arrested. Chigirinsky acted as guarantor for a loan to his development company Russian Land in the amount of more than 3 billion rubles. and is now unable to service this debt. It follows from the court decision that the entrepreneur is prohibited from transferring funds from the UK in an amount exceeding the equivalent of 3.12 billion rubles. In addition, a security arrest was imposed on the Sovetsky Hotel on Leningradsky Prospekt in Moscow, the site under the Rossiya Tower on the territory of Moscow City, as well as other assets in the capital and St. Petersburg, land plots in the Kaliningrad region and Klin , commercial real estate in Sochi, Irkutsk and Krasnodar. Two Moscow apartments of the entrepreneur, his London mansion Hugh House and Villa Maria Irina on the Cote d'Azur in France were under arrest. Experts estimate the businessman’s entire Russian real estate at approximately $206 million. However, some of the assets claimed by VTB have already been sold or promised to other creditors. In the spring, it turned out that Chigirinsky owes about $400 million to Sibir Energy, of which he was a shareholder until recently. Now Sibir Energy is trying to get this money through the courts (claims have also been filed in the UK High Court). And on July 8, employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs searched the office of Sibir Energy, suspecting that its subsidiaries owed the state more than 600 million rubles. during the period when they were under the control of Chigirinsky.

// NON-STANDARD POSITION

GAZ achieved record guarantees

Oleg Deripaska's GAZ Group agreed with the commission of First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov on state guarantees for loans worth about 20 billion rubles. According to sources of the Kommersant newspaper familiar with the commission’s decision, in the protocol it stated its intention to “consider the possibility of providing GAZ group enterprises” with state guarantees worth 19 billion rubles. This is a record amount of guarantees: no Russian borrower has yet received government support for this amount. The GAZ Group needs these guarantees in order to restructure its debt, which at the end of April was estimated at 42 billion rubles: creditors are ready to give the GAZ Group new loans, but there is not enough collateral for them. According to the newspaper's sources, the idea is that the creditor banks of the GAZ group (there are 12 of them in total, the main ones are VTB, VEB and Sberbank) will issue the group a new syndicated loan for the total amount of its obligations, due to which the group will fully repay its obligations to these same banks . Each of them will give the GAZ group exactly as much money as the group owes him. The loan is issued for five years at 17% per annum, but can be reviewed annually. The last condition appeared because the issue of agreeing on a uniform rate for everyone was the most difficult in negotiations with banks. However, the GAZ group lacks collateral by 19 billion rubles. to attract a new syndicated loan. In this situation, sources explain, the banks themselves came up with a proposal to turn to the state for state guarantees and, together with the GAZ group, defended their position at the commission. But the situation is complicated by the fact that the resolution on the procedure for issuing guarantees sets the maximum volume per principal at 10 billion rubles. A scheme is currently being discussed that will circumvent this requirement. One of the options is to provide state guarantees to two different legal entities within the GAZ group: the Gorky Automobile Plant and the Ural plant.

// FRIENDLY MATCH

PIK pays in square meters

PIK Group has found a way to pay off its most problematic loan with VTB Bank, to which it cannot return 2.7 billion rubles. since December last year and has already lost in court more than once. The developer is negotiating to transfer the rights to his development project in the south-west of Moscow - the Ramenki residential complex - to the bank. “This is one of the options proposed to the bank by the developer himself. Negotiations are at an early stage, there is no decision yet,” a source close to the bank said to the Kommersant newspaper. According to another source, the PIK group expects to use the Ramenki project to repay almost the entire debt to VTB, and if this turns out to be insufficient, it is ready to offer another asset. The Ramenki project involves the construction of a business class residential complex with an area of 75 thousand square meters. m on Michurinsky Prospekt, not far from the high-rise building of Moscow State University. Construction has not yet begun. Before the crisis, the market value of this site could be $150 million, but now, market participants believe, it is almost impossible to find a buyer willing to shell out even $50 million in real money. The total debt load of PIK at the beginning of April 2009 was estimated at 44.9 billion rubles. Of these, about 14 billion rubles. — debt to Sberbank. And a loan of 2.7 billion rubles issued by VTB turned out to be the most problematic. At the beginning of April, it became known that the share capital of PIK included structures of the Nafta-Moscow company of Suleiman Kerimov (now they own more than 25% of the OJSC, and there is also permission from the FAS to increase the stake to 45%). One of the conditions of this deal was Nafta's obligation to help with debt restructuring.

// CHALLENGE CUP

John Deere has found a new field

The head of the American Deere & Company, Samuel R. Allen, said that by 2015 the company, which sells agricultural and industrial equipment under the John Deere brand, will invest about $500 million in Russia. This money will be used to create an assembly plant and logistics center for Deere & Company in Kaluga region, as well as a joint venture with Russian manufacturers of agricultural equipment. Allen did not disclose details of these projects. The Russian office of Deere & Company reported that the company may create a joint venture for the production of tractors, “for example, with the Volgograd Tractor Plant” (VgTZ). But Mikhail Bolotin, owner of the Tractor Plants concern (controls VgTZ), says that there have been no negotiations on this topic yet. In the Kaluga region, Deere & Company began building only a logistics terminal, which should be put into operation in 2010, and the parameters of Deere & Company's assembly production in Kaluga are unknown to market participants. According to Mikhail Bolotin, for $80 million in Kaluga it is possible to create a full-fledged production of up to 5 thousand combines and up to 20 thousand tractors per year. These are big numbers for Russia: the country's largest Rostov-based Rostselmash produced about 6 thousand combine harvesters in 2008. Although Deere & Company has been talking about the intention to build a plant in Russia since 2006, experts note that Russia increased duties on combine harvesters in 2008 (15%, but not less than €120 per 1 kW of engine power), and in this situation Deere & Company really makes sense to localize production in Russia.

Based on materials from Reuters agency, Kommersant newspaper.

$300 million could be the cost of real estate sold by Open Investments OJSC (OPIN) to partner companies of Vladimir Potanin's Interros. Among the objects sold are the Meyerhold business center and the Novotel Moscow Center in Moscow. Mikhail Prokhorov's ONEXIM group, which, like Potanin, owns 30% of OPIN's business, said that these transactions are an "opaque withdrawal of assets" from the company

Approved state guarantees for enterprises (spring-summer 2009)

CompanyVolume
state support
(billion rubles)

Moment	15
AvtoVAZ	10
Plant name	8
Khrunicheva
NPO Saturn	5.2
KamAZ	5
Sollers	5
MMP named after	2.9
Chernyshova
KAPO named after	2.1
Gorbunova
OJSC	1.5
Zelenodolsky
plant named after
Gorky

Sources: messages from government leaders.

PLAYERS – Money – Kommersant