RussNeft Acquires ‘Grand’.

As the Kommersant has come to know, NK RussNeft OAO has acquired one of Moscow’s first-rate retail networks called Association Grand ZAO owing 64 petrol stations in Moscow and its province. The parties to the deal won’t disclose the price. But according to the information of the Kommersant, the price could be up to $200 million which twice exceeds the market price of these petrol stations. As the Kommersant was told by sources operating at the metropolitan fuel market, some time ago Russneft controlled by Mikhail Gutseriev bought Association Grand ZAO, possessing the second largest retail network of own petrol stations following Moscow Fuel Company. Grand owns 59 petrol stations making up 8.5% of the metropolitan fuel market; five more stations of Grand are located in the Moscow oblast. According to the information provided by the sources, presently the deal is at the stage of finalization and will be made public in the beginning of April.
NK RussNeft OAO, whose recoverable reserves come to about 450 million tons, produced 10 million tons of crude oil in 2004. The company structures nearly 20 oil producing entities, Belkamneft and Varieganneft being the biggest ones.
RussNeft does not own refining capacities and until recently hasn’t had a single retail network. Association Grand ZAO is one of the first-rate retail networks of petrol stations in Moscow. The receipts of the company for nine months of the last year were close to 2 billion rubles. The dead loss was 2.185 million rubles.
Yesterday RussNeft vice-president Edward Sarkisov and director of Grand Eugene Arkusha made no comments to the Kommersant in relation to the purchase of the retail network by the oil company. Participants of the fuel market estimate the price of Grand as amounting to $70-90 million. However some sources of the Kommersant say that RussNeft has paid at least twice as much for the company. According to one of the interlocutors of the Kommersant, former shareholders of Grand quoted nearly $200 million for the company and neither Slavneft (whose biggest retailer in the capital Grand is, selling gasoline produced at Yaroslavlnefteorgsynthes which makes part of Slavneft) nor its shareholders (Sibneft and TNK-BP) were able to outbid RussNeft. Representatives of Slavneft and its shareholders made no comments on this report yesterday.
According to Association Grand ZAO’s official accounts for the fourth quarter of 2004, as of the 31st of December five limited liability companies, or LLCs, were its shareholders (Moscow-registered Spetsstroy, Production Service and Krasnogorsk-registered Spetspromavtomatika, Linguist and Tender) each of them possessing 20% stake of Grand. According to the sources of the Kommersant, the major co-owner of Grand was General Director of Rosgosstrakh OAO Danil Khachaturov. Mr. Khachaturov had worked at Slavneft as a vice-president at the time when the company was run by Mikhail Gutseriev.
Yesterday the Kommersant couldn’t get any comments from Mr. Khachaturov.
Representatives of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, or FAS, didn’t tell the Kommersant yesterday whether anyone had applied to the Antimonopoly Service for acquiring Grand assets. The sources of the Kommersant do not rule out that RussNeft needs no approval from FAS because the company has bought the shares from the LLCs possessing Grand.