TMH no longer buying Rosatom's 49% stake in Delo Group as cos fail to agree on price - paper
MOSCOW. Nov 6 (Interfax) - Rosatom, Delo Group and train maker Transmashholding (TMH) are terminating an agreement they reached at the end of 2024 for TMH to buy the state corporation's 49% stake in the transportation and logistics group, national daily Kommersant reported on Thursday.
The decision that it would be advisable to stop the deal was made at a recent meeting between Delo Group founder Sergei Shishkarev, TMH CEO Kirill Lipa and Rosatom first deputy CEO Kirill Komarov, the paper said.
Rosatom bought a 30% stake in Delo Group at the end of 2019 for 29.9 billion rubles, and in 2022 it exercised an option to buy another 19%, increasing its interest to 49%.
Corporate relations between the partners were sometimes troubled and in December 2024 they entered into an agreement with a third party, TMH. Under this agreement, TMH bought 1% of Delo Management Company shares from Shishkarev, reducing the latter's stake to 50%. This 1% gave TMH the right to appoint the management company's CEO and Alexei Lebedev was soon named to this position.
The deal was expected to continue, but it could be structured in various ways. One option was a share swap between Rosatom and TMH, with the former exchanging its stake in Delo Management Company for a stake in TMH. However, the agreement could be reversed if the parties did not manage to reach an agreement within a year.
The paper cited a source close to one of the parties as saying that the terms of Shishkarev's sale of 1% in Delo Management Company to TMH stipulated that this stake would be returned if the deal did not proceed.
Back in June, Lipa also said that the deal could be reversed and the 1% returned to its original owner, and that to move forward the parties needed to reach an agreement on the key parameters of the deal and its structure. "In other words this is the price, this is the advisability, formats of participation," Lipa said.
The paper reported a source familiar with the deal as saying that Rosatom and TMH could not agree on the exchange of assets as they disagreed on their valuation. Another source close to one of the parties confirmed that the main reason for the collapse of the deal was disagreement on the price. Sources previously estimated that Rosatom's stake in Delo Management Company was worth at least 200 billion rubles.
Another circumstance that sources mentioned as complicating the deal was Rosatom's potential partnership with Dubai-based port operation DP World. Rosatom is in negotiations to sell DP World a stake of 50% minus one share in Russian transportation group Fesco with a view to creating an international logistics champion, the paper said. The deal has been discussed in various forms for a long time.
"I am postponing my detailed comments, assessments and view of the current situation and its development until the publication of a joint statement by Delo Group, Rosatom and Transmashholding," Shishkarev said on his Telegram channel on Thursday.
Rosatom's press service said in turn that "Delo Group is managed in accordance with the current agreement between Rosatom state corporation and Sergei Nikolaevich Shishkarev. We do not plan to make any changes to the agreement and are not preparing any joint statements."
