Rail Garant co-founder sells stake, creating new railroad operator - paper
MOSCOW. Sept 27 (Interfax) - Sergei Guschin and Sergei Smyslov have consolidated 100% of railroad operator Rail Garant after buying out a 10% stake from their partner Nikolai Falin, who is creating a new operator based on LLC Promlogistika with Ukrainian businessman Sergei Shpak's Rail Trans Holding, Kommersant reported on Thursday.
Falin said the "deal will be closed by October 1." The parties to the deal are not disclosing the price.
Rail Garant operates a fleet of 30,000 railcars, including 23,200 company-owned, putting it in seventh place in Russia, according to Deloitte & Touche and InfraNews.
VTB Capital analyst Olga Doronina said the market price of a 10% stake in the company is about $120 million-$140 million, "but since we are talking about a deal among partners, it might have been closed at a lower price." The paper cited a source as saying that "the minority shareholder received far less for his stake."
Falin does not intend to leave the railroad business. He is involved in the creation of a new railroad operator based on LLC Promlogistika, Kommersant said. This company has leased about 3,000 railcars from Rail Trans Holding, and the fleet is expected to expand to 5,000 by the end of the year.
"The fleet will be wholly leased for now. It will be leased cars by Rail Trans Holding entities and my companies. The stakes in the LLC are distributed according to the size of the fleet contributed," Falin said.
He said Rail Trans Holding now has a fleet of nearly 8,000 railcars, but it primarily leases them to other operators. "This is not always lucrative, so they have decided to develop their own operator and I am acting as a partner," Falin said.
Promlogistika is headed by Oleg Tsitsy, the former head of LLC Pipe Transport Company, one of Rail Garant's assets.
Rail Trans Holding is controlled by Sergei Shpak, a former senior executive at Ukraine's Azovmash, the paper said. Rail Trans Holding said only that Shpak chairs the company's board of directors.
Rail Trans Holding has plans to set up its own production of railcars at the Novozybkov Engineering Plant in Bryansk Region, which it acquired in the first half of 2012.
"Production of gondola cars will begin soon, then production of tank cars and bogies will be developed," the company said. Rail Trans Holding wants to be producing 1,500 railcars per month within 18 months. The company bought the documentation for the gondola cars from Russian engineering company Uralvagonzavod (UVZ), which on Wednesday confirmed this.
