Gazfond, Alor Group owner might merge pension assets - paper
MOSCOW. Sept 23 (Interfax) - Gazfond and the owner of Alor Group, Anatoly Gavrilenko might merge their pension funds, business daily Vedomosti reported on Wednesday.
Gazfond spun off pension assets into a separate fund, Gazfond Pension Savings, with 108.6 billion rubles under management, a year ago. There are plans to merge this fund with Gavrilenko's three pension funds - Naslediye, Promagrofond and KIT Finance, with a combined 210.3 billion rubles under management - to form the biggest pension assets group on the Russian market.
This would be a noncash deal, with the parties getting stakes in proportion to their contributions to the assets of the merged entity, the paper said. Therefore, Gazfond could get 33-35% of the merged group.
The deal is being structured through operating company KIT Finance Pension Administrator. The parties have asked for the approval of the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service and Central Bank of Russia.
Gazfond Pension Savings CEO Andrei Kokin said in June that the fund would have to resolve the issue of its ownership this year. By law, the pension fund's shareholder must be a commercial company, which its current shareholder, Gazfond is not. There was discussion at the time that Gazfond would set up a subsidiary that would become the owner of Gazfond Pension Savings in order to comply with the law.