Avet Mirakyan's Insight may buy U.S. Deere leasing subsidiary - source

MOSCOW. Feb 16 (Interfax) - Avet Mirakyan's Insight may become the buyer of the Russian leasing subsidiary of the American Deere & Co , the world's largest manufacturer of agricultural machinery and equipment.

The deal, which involves the Insight Investment Group's purchase of a 100% share in John Deere Financial, was discussed and generally approved at a subcommittee of the government commission on foreign investment control in January, a source told Interfax.

An Insight representative declined comment.

Mirakyan, the former general director of SFI , together with partners, created the Insight group last year. He owns 80% of the company while 4% each belongs to Artem Astanin, Anton Barsht, Mikhail Gonopolsky, Alexei Komar and David Pogosyan.

The company has already acquired the leasing structure of a Western company that left Russia due to the events in Ukraine. Last September, the Insight group closed a deal to acquire the Siemens Finance leasing company, now called Deltaleasing, from Siemens. The group is ready to consider the leasing assets of all outgoing foreigners, Mirakyan said in an interview with Frank Media in September. "Open the list of captive leasing companies where there are foreign names - this whole list matches our list of potential acquisitions exactly. However, I think all our competitors, one way or another, operate off the same list. (...) Take all the car manufacturers - and not only of cars, but also equipment manufacturers, for example. All of them have captive leasing subsidiaries," he said.

John Deere Financial's 2021 revenue was 2.7 billion rubles with a net profit of 0.9 billion rubles. In addition to the agro-industrial complex, among Deere's subsidiary companies are a construction company, a coal mining company, and a timber complex.