Ildar Khalikov will again head the board of directors of Tatspirtprom

The government of Tatarstan is once again taking charge of Tatspirtprom. After a one-year break, the Board of Directors of the OJSC will be headed by Prime Minister Ildar Khalikov. The company reduced its net profit by almost three times last year. However, Tatspirtprom says that personnel decisions are not related to the company’s financial results during the period when its board of directors was headed by the head of Ak Bars Bank, Robert Musin. He claims that he himself abandoned management of the enterprise.

Yesterday, OJSC Tatspirtprom reported that the day before the meeting of shareholders (the sole owner of the enterprise is the government of Tatarstan) decided to terminate the powers of the previous board of directors, headed by the chairman of the board of directors of Ak Bars bank Robert Musin, and form a new one. Apart from Mr. Musin, it did not include Deputy Chairman of the Board of Ak Bars Bulat Davletshin and First Deputy of JSC Holding Company Ak Bars Sergei Mukhin. But the representation of officials in the person of the Prime Minister of Tatarstan Ildar Khalikov and the head of the State Alcohol Inspectorate of the Republic Igor Marchenko has strengthened (he replaced the Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of Tatarstan Rashat Fattakhov on the board of directors). The head of the department of agro-industrial complex, land relations and consumer market of the Cabinet of Ministers of Tatarstan, Azat Ziganshin, the general director of the holding company Ak Bars, Ivan Egorov, and his two deputies, Svetlana Sotova and Alexander Tygin, as well as the general director of Tatspirtprom, Giorgiy Kupriyanov, retained their places on the council.

It is assumed that the new board of directors of Tatspirtprom will be headed by Ildar Khalikov. Formally, his election as chairman should take place at the first meeting of the new council, which, as Mr. Kupriyanov told Kommersant, is scheduled for next Friday.

The Prime Minister of Tatarstan led the board of directors of Tatspirtprom before Robert Musin. Under Ildar Khalikov, in August 2010, Rashit Shaikhutdinov, who had been the general director of the enterprise for 14 years, was dismissed and Giorgi Kupriyanov was appointed. Mr. Khalikov set the latter the task of increasing sales volumes outside Tatarstan and loading the capacity of factories, in particular, the Shumbutsky, Pervomaisky distilleries, the Nurlatsky distillery and the Sarmanovsky distillery (see Kommersant dated August 6, 2010). However, a couple of months after this, on October 21, the board of directors, headed by Ildar Khalikov, decided to liquidate the Pervomaisky and Shumbutsky distilleries and break Tatspirtprom’s monopoly on the local market by selling its Buinsky distillery in favor of Russian Standard Vodka LLC for 632 million rubles.

The council, chaired by Mr. Musin, continued to optimize Tatspirtprom - the Aleksandrovsky and Tyurnyasevo distilleries, the Sarmanovsky distillery, the Menzelinsky and Nurlatsky distilleries were liquidated. Tatspirtprom explains this decision by the fact that these production facilities no longer comply with the “tightened licensing requirements” of Rosalkogolregulirovanie due to significant wear and tear of the equipment. The company notes that as a result, there was an increase in the utilization of the remaining capacities (currently the OJSC has 11 alcohol and distillery factories). According to the annual report, in 2011 the company increased alcohol production by 6% - to 2.17 million decaliters, vodka production - by 3%, to 4.19 million decaliters. Sales of alcoholic products increased by 4% - to 4.8 million decaliters, while sales outside the republic tripled - to 526.4 thousand decaliters. The company, in order to maintain markets, began producing third-party brands - “Five Drops” (under license from Logos LLC), “Old Belfry” (X5 Real Estate LLC), “Fish”, “Tear of Rus'”, “Living Lake” ( LLC "Kazenka"), "Nastoyaschaya" (LLC "Honest Vodka Company"). In 2011, Tatspirtprom produced 308.2 thousand decalitres of “contract bottling products.” In addition, the company entered into agreements with West wind wire (Kazakhstan) for the use of the trademark “Spetsrozliv extra”, “Spetsrozliv lux”, “Assorted”, as well as with Westor-Alco LLC, Arkada LLC. This year, Tatspirtprom began production of Belenkaya (Synergy) vodka.

Finam Investment Company analyst Anna Mishutina believes that “the growth rate of key indicators was formed at a relatively low level, which could become one of the factors for personnel changes in top management.” According to the report, in 2011 Tatspirtprom increased revenue by 5% - to 3.68 billion rubles. At the same time, the company’s net profit decreased almost threefold - to 53.9 million rubles. (from 155.3 million in 2010). The company explains the decline in the figure due to plant downtime due to problems in obtaining licenses, which expired on July 1 last year. This fact led to a decrease in the profitability of Tatspirtprom shares from 89.18 to 30.97 rubles.

However, Mr. Kupriyanov assured that the Prime Minister’s return to leadership of the company’s board of directors has nothing to do with the results of Robert Musin’s team. “Nothing like that,” he said.

The government of Tatarstan did not comment on this news yesterday - the head of the department of the Cabinet of Ministers of Tatarstan Azat Ziganshin, whom Kommersant contacted as a member of the previous and new board of directors, refused to communicate. “I was not authorized to do this,” he said. The head of the press service of the President of the Republic, Andrei Kuzmin, did not answer Kommersant’s calls.

Robert Musin told Kommersant that a year ago he headed the board of directors because the republican authorities asked the “Ak Bars Group team” to “aggressively work” on the enterprise. However, he has now resigned from the position due to his busy schedule. At the same time, he admitted that the task assigned to him was not fully completed, in particular, the company did not significantly expand into other regions.

Olga Kudrina

This is not the first time for the Prime Minister