SDS founder Fedyaev might sell Azot Group stake

MOSCOW. Aug 12 (Interfax) - Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has received an application to acquire 99.9987% of shares in JSC Azot Invest, the regulator reported on its website without naming the applicant.

Azot Invest's financials for 2023 showed that more than 99% of shares in the company are owned by Siberian Business Union Holding Co. (SDS) founder Mikhail Fedyaev and that Azot Invest owns 40% of Azot Group, one of Russia's largest fertilizer producers. Azot Invest, according to the document, "carries out activities to manage JSC Azot Group within the bounds of the stake [it] owns."

SDS's financials for 2023 stated that Fedyaev owns 95% of the holding company.

Kommersant, citing sources, reported on Monday that market insiders think the most likely buyer of Azot Invest is billionaire Roman Trotsenko, who owns the other 60% of Azot Group. An outside investor is unlikely to be interested in a minority stake, although a new shareholder could reduce the group's financial burden in implementing new projects, the paper said.

Azot Group includes JSC Azot (Kemerovo), Angarsk Nitrogen Fertilizer Plant LLC in Irkutsk Region, JSC Meleuz Mineral Fertilizers in Bashkortostan and JSC Ammoni in Mendeleyevsk, Tatarstan. In addition to mineral fertilizer, the group's plants produce industrial ammonium nitrate, caprolactam and methanol.

The group's website said that it has capacity to annually produce over 2.4 million tonnes of ammonium nitrate, almost 2 million tonnes each of ammonia and nitric acid, about 1.4 million tonnes of urea, 360,000 tonnes of ammonium sulphate, 125,000 tonnes of caprolactam, 200,000 tonnes of UAN and 234,000 tonnes of methanol.