The bank is trying to seize the assets of the Civil Code

Bank Vozrozhdenie, to which the largest grain trader Valars Group of Kirill Podolsky owes a total of 650 million rubles, intends to arrest his Stavropol assets - the food company Don and the agricultural enterprise Aigurskoye. According to experts, this is a proactive step on the part of the bank: most of the assets of the group, which has $18 billion in debt to a number of financial institutions, could go to larger creditors.

Bank Vozrozhdenie fears that Valars will have no funds left to repay its debt.
Photo: Andrey Korshunov, Kommersant / buy photo

At the end of March, Vozrozhdenie Bank applied to the Stavropol Arbitration Court with a request to foreclose on loans issued by the Valars Group in 2007–2012, on the assets of the group's LLC Food Company Don and OJSC Agricultural Enterprise Aigursky. (Stavropol region). The enterprises specialize in growing vegetables and grains and have a total land area of about 50 thousand hectares. The bank demands to seize buildings, land and equipment.

According to the Supreme Arbitration Court, in November last year, Vozrozhdenie filed a lawsuit against nine structures of the group, demanding the recovery of 650 million rubles. debt for Rostov, Kuban and Stavropol businesses. Then the case regarding the Stavropol companies was separated into independent proceedings. At the same time, “Don” and “Aigursky” filed counterclaims against the bank, trying to challenge the mortgage agreements, under which their assets were included in the collateral mass.

Kommersant's interlocutor at the bank explained that Vozrozhdenie is now trying to speed up the process of foreclosure on the debtor's property, since, according to him, larger creditors - Sberbank, Deutsche Bank and Petrocommerce - may soon enter into the Valars case. “The largest creditor is Sberbank, and we do not rule out that it will try to gain control over the entire business of the group. Therefore, “Vozrozhdenie” is proactive,” he noted. According to the source, the group collectively owes 18 billion rubles to all banks.

The owner of Valars Group, Kirill Podolsky, declined to comment. The press service of Sberbank told Kommersant that the southern holding's debt to the bank exceeds 8.5 billion rubles.

Valars Management Ltd is part of the Valars holding (created by Kirill Podolsky in 2006). The group is engaged in the production and trading of grains. It owns about 200 thousand hectares of land in the black soil zone of Russia, warehouse complexes with a total capacity of 972 thousand tons, including three elevators in Russia, as well as a network of trade offices and two grain terminals in Taganrog and Azov. In 2010, the group's agricultural assets were spun off into the Valinor company (the main share in it belongs to Valars Management Ltd).

Valars' problems began after the crisis, says a source close to the group. Then they constantly bought agricultural assets with short-term loans. After the crisis, and then the introduction of an embargo on the sale of grain, the market sank, and the group was unable to pay its loans. To save the situation, Valinor tried to go public with an IPO, but it did not take place: Kirill Podolsky valued his entire business at no less than $700 million, and planned to earn at least $200 million from the sale of shares. However, potential investors valued the company at only $420 million, which did not suit the IPO organizers.

In the fall of 2013, it became known that Oleg Bakhmatyuk’s Ukrlandfarming holding company had purchased Valinor’s Ukrainian and Crimean enterprises. Selling the group's domestic property will be problematic, experts say. “Two Stavropol companies lease at least half of the cultivated land. The lease agreements of one of them expire this year, the second - in 2018. Therefore, their cost will be minimal. The same can be said about the rest of the holding’s companies,” says Dmitry Rylko, head of the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies. Earlier, Kommersant’s source at Bank Vozrozhdenie claimed that Sberbank was looking for an interested investor for the group’s assets. Sberbank itself told Kommersant that “settlement possibilities are now being considered.”

Tatiana Serbina

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