T-Bank Group buys controlling stakes in factoring business from Qiwi
MOSCOW. July 22 (Interfax) - T-Bank Group (formerly Tinkoff Bank ) has bought out controlling stakes (51% each) in ROWI Factoring Plus LLC and ROWI Technologies LLC from Qiwi JSC, as follows from the data on the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.
T-Projects LLC, a subsidiary of TCS Holding (the parent company of T-Bank), became the owner of the stakes in both companies, while the stakes are still in T-Bank's pledge. Interfax filed a request to the bank.
Qiwi pledged its stakes in ROWI Factoring Plus and ROWI Tech to T-Bank in late May. Later, on June 11, the bank announced the group's intention to buy these stakes and supplement T-Bank's product range with factoring for small and medium-sized businesses, which will be developed based on the ROWI fintech platform. The transaction was expected to be finalized after the Federal Antimonopoly Service approves it.
The remaining 49% stake in ROWI Factoring Plus and ROWI Tech is held by Plus Management Group LLC, which is owned by ROWI co-founders Viktor Vernov and Yevgeny Rodionov, according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. The ROWI team, including Vernov and Rodionov, will remain independent in decision-making and will continue to develop the company's business, T-bank said.
Rodionov also owns ROWI Factoring LLC, which was registered on April 2 and has a 100,000-ruble authorized capital, according to data from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. He is also the sole owner of R1 Group LLC, which was registered at the same time.
Qiwi Group in late January announced the sale of Russian assets consolidated under Qiwi JSC to Hong Kong-based Fusion Factor Fintech Ltd, which is owned by former Qiwi plc CEO Andrei Protopopov. The deal includes Qiwi Bank, Qiwi Wallet, Qiwi business, Contact money transfer system, Rowi, Realweb, Flocktory, Taxiaggregator, IntellectMoney and a number of other assets. Its price totaled 23.75 billion rubles. The Central Bank of Russia revoked Qiwi Bank's license a month later, on February 21. A temporary administration represented by the Deposit Insurance Agency was introduced in the bank, and the agency was later entrusted with the functions of a bank liquidator.
"The project was initially implemented as a partnership between Qiwi and the ROWI founders. Qiwi had a very specific role in this project: to provide banking infrastructure for developing ROWI's services, as well as to provide funding for factoring development. In our current reality, we cannot provide ROWI with either. Therefore, the decision to sell was quite logical and mutually beneficial," Qiwi shareholder Andrei Protopopov said.
TCS Holding was established as part of TCS Group's re-registration from Cyprus to Russia. The main stockholder of the holding is Vladimir Potanin's Interros.
