PRESS: Russia’s Rostec finds private investor for Tractor Plants

MOSCOW, Apr 20 (PRIME) -- Machine holding Transportnye Komponenty (Transport Components, or Transcomponent) will invest in troubled Tractor Plants of Rostec together with the Russian state industrial corporation’s another subsidiary, Kommersant business daily reported on Friday.

Sources told Kommersant that Rostec’s management board approved the decision on Wednesday. A source said that Rostec would sell shares in Tractor Plants to the new owner at a token value as the troubled subsidiary is heavily burdened with debts. The investor plans to replenish working capital and restructure debts by buying them from Vnesheconombank (VEB), Kommersant reported.

Tractor Plants’ debt exceeded 85 billion rubles as of the end of 2017. Since late October 2017, the company’s main creditor VEB has been bankrupting the troubled company.

Transcomponent unites 20 machine-building companies. The company does not officially disclose its owners, but Transcomponent LLC is owned by Cyprus-based Tadorix Consultants Limited, the owner of Transmashdizel, which in its turn is a partner of railway equipment maker Transmashholding of tycoons Andrei Bokarev and Iskander Makhmudov. Transcomponent’s board of directors is chaired by former top manager of Transmashholding Alexander Noskov, the business daily said.

A new subsidiary of Transcomponent, in which Rostec’s missile weapon systems producer Vysokotochnye Kompleksy will have a 33% stake, will become the owner of Tractor Plants. Later, all military facilities of Tractor Plants will be transferred to Vysokotochnye Kompleksy, while Transcomponent will become the owner of 26 civil machinery plants of the troubled company. Rostec plans to close the deal until the end of June.

Rostec CEO Sergei Chemezov confirmed the company’s plans, and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin supported the deal as well.

(60.8583 rubles – U.S. $1)

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