Private shareholders in Vnukovo International Airport, represented by general director of the company Vitaly Vantsev, couldn't get $30 million for the Sochi fuelling complex.
Photo: Yury Martyanov
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Basic Element Settles with Vnukovo
The conflict between affiliates of Oleg Deripaska's Basic Element and the owners of Moscow's Vnukovo Airport over ZAO Sochi-Avia-Invest, the fueling complex at Sochi International Airport, is over. Basic Element, which also owns the Sochi airport, purchased the complex from Vnukovo shareholders for $10 million, a discount compared to the price of $25-30 million mentioned Vnukovo representatives, due to the obscure ownership of some of the assets in the fueling complex. The first thing the new owner did was to break off its relationship with current fuel providers.
The conflict arose this spring, when Strategia-Yug, also a Deripaska possession and then the new owner of the Sochi airport, unilaterally cancelled the agreement with Sochi-Avia-Invest on the use of the airport's fuelling system. Since Sochi-Avia-Invest owned the only fuelling system at the airport, the airport's operations were threatened. Sochi-Avia-Invest was sold at a lower price than first named because the corporation's right to the use of the land and property of the airport were not properly formalized. “Thus both parties settled the conflict to their mutual benefit,” a source noted. It would have taken at least a year to build a new fuelling system.
Sochi Airport is Russia's seventh busiest, with 1.36 million passengers per year. It is part of Deripaska's Aeropoty Yuga holding. The government sold it to Strategia Yug in November 2006. Vnukovo was the main competitor for the airport, and managed to force up its price from 3.5 billion rubles to 5.5 billion rubles.
Sochi-Avia-Invest has cancelled the services of its fuel provider OOO TD Airport Fuel Supply. Evgeny Ostrovsky, general director of that company, said that that comp-any received a letter a week ago informing it that their agreement would be cancelled due to reconstruction of the fuel reservoirs and fuel would be stored by Sochi-Avia-Invest. Ostrovksy expressed doubt that that arrangement would be more profitable for Sochi-Avia-Invest. Oleg Paneleev, head of the Aviaport analytical agency said that Soch-Avia-Invest could run into trouble with antimonopoly bodies.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of July 05, 2007
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