KOMMERSANT. Alrosa has still been attempting to speed up the sale of an equity stake in its captive bank, MAK-Bank, one of its non-core assets. As business daily Kommersant wrote, the diamond producer intends to turn the bank private. This is a coercive measure to gain real control over the bank which the diamond giant presently de facto lacks.
At the end of last week Alrosa disclosed a material fact about an upcoming meeting of the supervisory board on February 12. At the meeting the company plans to determine its position on issues put on the agenda of MAK-Bank’s general meeting of participants which, as the paper learned, is scheduled for mid-March. On the agenda is turning MAK-Bank private (presently the bank is a limited liability company). Alrosa confirmed this. This action aims to sharpen the bank’s investment appeal before the sale of an equity stake which is scheduled for 2014, the bank’s spokesman specified.
MAK-Bank was established in 1990. Alrosa holds an 84.66% interest, around 15% held by businesses, with the rest falling to minority shareholders (individuals).
The point is that Alrosa, being a majority shareholder, de facto does not control the bank. “Presently the bank’s charter runs that one participant holds one vote regardless of an equity stake, and for this reason once this procedure is complete the bank’s shareholders will held at a general meeting the number of votes equal to their stake in the charter capital," Alrosa’s press service reported.
Furthermore, the company hopes to simplify the procedure for selling its equity position after the bank changes its legal status. “At an open joint stock company a shareholder has the right to sell its interest freely, while selling an equity stake in a limited liability company includes several stages starting from the receipt of consent from all participants to the time when records in the register of legal entities are made,“ the company’s representative added. “Turning a limited liability company into an open joint stock company will indeed simplify the sale of the equity stake as this will remove a number of obligations to the minority shareholders from the majority shareholder,” Eduard Kucherov, head of tax and law at Baker Tilly Russaudit, agreed.
