Kazakhstan's Asadel not mulling acquisition of OBI assets

ALMATY. April 28 (Interfax) - Kazakhstan-based Asadel Holding, the OBI franchise owner in the republic, is not considering the acquisition of the DIY retailer's assets in Russia, the company told Interfax.

"At the moment, Asadel is not mulling acquisition of the OBI assets in Russia," the company said.

Neither Yerlan Seisembayev nor Galimzhan Yesenov are among the shareholder of the company or involved in its management processes.

The Kommersant newspaper wrote earlier referring to a source that Asadel Holding might become a new owner of the OBI chain of DIY hypermarkets in Russia.

The newspaper also said that Yerlan Seisembayev was Asadel DIY President, while businessman Galimzhan Yessenov was named as another owner of the Asadel Holding.

OBI said in March that it was shutting its 27 stores in Russia. Later the category director of the OBI chain in Russia, Maxim Suravegin, said at the DIY Forum that the retailer plans to resume operations. German DIY retailer denied the information about reopening its stores saying that the stores in Russia will remain closed.

OBI pulled out of the Russian project in April. Boris Lyuboshits, the founder of Audit Group LLC and the legal firm Cezar Consulting, became the interim manager of the assets to be transferred to a new investor. In 2021, Lyuboshits acted as the head of the cosmetics producer Natura Siberica for a few months after the death of its founder Andrei Trubnikov.

OBI had 27 stores and 4,900 employees in Russia. The retailer has more than 640 stores in ten countries in Central and Eastern Europe, including more than 350 in Germany, and 48,000 employees in total. The company's sales in 2021 totaled 8.7 billion euros.

The first OBI hypermarket in Kazakhstan was opened in 2018. In total, Asadel was planning to open six retail stores in Kazakhstan by 2022.