Developer might buy Severstal's pension fund
MOSCOW. Nov 1 (Interfax) - The owner of real estate development company O1 Properties, Boris Mints might buy Nongovernmental Pension Fund Stalfond from Russian steelmaker Severstal, national daily Kommersant reported on Friday, citing sources.
Severstal values its pension fund at more than 20% of assets under management, which totaled about 37 billion rubles on July 1, and is demanding a percentage for future asset growth, the paper cited one source as saying.
This would be the second corporate pension fund to be acquired by Mints. Companies he controls earlier purchased NPF Telekom-Soyuz, which manages pensions for national operator Rostelecom and Russian Post.
Ilya Scherbovich's UCP Partners was also looking to buy Stalfond, but ultimately only acquired the pension fund of mining giant Norilsk Nickel , which was subsequently renamed Nasledie. Norilsk Nickel said in a Eurobond prospectus that it expected to get $85 million (about 2.5 billion rubles) for the pension fund. Business daily Vedomosti reported in the summer that UCP might pay about 10 billion rubles for both funds. This would mean Stalfond accounted for about 7.5 billion rubles, which coincides with the current estimate of Kommersant's sources.
Mints is not short of cash, as ICT Group co-owner Alexander Nesis has reportedly agreed to buy more than 40% of O1 Properties, the asset portfolio of which was estimated at $3.85 billion in October 2013.