The market value of the holding, into which non-banking financial assets of the Gutseriev-Shishkhanov family will be folded into before end 2016, will be around Rub 80 bln. The holding will focus on the domestic market and, longer term, does not rule out expansion into the banking sector, Safmar Financial Group (former B&N Group) General Director Avet Mirakian said in an interview to TASS about this and the future of holding Safmar Financial Assets.
"We have an objective of becoming more transparent, more comprehensible for investors, the regulator and the community. In this context, the efforts to fold our financial assets into a unified holding is part of this strategy," Mikarian explained the purpose of setting up a new financial structure. "This will be a holding that will unite several segments of the financial market, namely leasing, insurance and private pension fund".
"We have Europlan that was purchased in late 2015," the Safmar FG chief executive noted, adding when deciding to buy the company the group thought how to make it public, and Europlan held an initial public offering at the end of 2015. Later the group acquired a 45% stake in insurer VSK and plans to up its holding to 49% by late November 2016. At the same time, the group folded its pension funds into private pension fund Safmar.
"In theory, it was possible to stage separate IPOs for every company, but, firstly, this is a long and thorny path and, secondly, we have already had Europlan which is public and quoted on the Moscow Exchange. For this reason, we decided to do the following: to issue additional shares at Europlan PJSC, the additional shares may be paid using VSK and PPF Safmar shares, and also cash. Thus, during the transit period Europlan PJSC will become the owner of VSK (an equity stake of up to 49%) and a 100% holding in PPF Safmar. Our next step will be to spin off leasing assets at Europlan into a standalone subsidiary," Mikarian said.
