Raven Property Group to sell Russian assets to local mgmt., delist shares

MOSCOW. March 18 (Interfax) - Raven Property Group (RPG), one of the leaders on the Russian warehouse real estate market, has decided to sell all of its Russian assets to local management "for nominal consideration," and cancel listings on all exchanges where its shares are traded, including the London Stock Exchange and Moscow Exchange , the company said in a statement.

The buyer of the Russian business will be Prestino Investments Ltd, a Cypriot company to be owned and controlled by RPG's Russian management team, led by Igor Bogorodov. Prestino will acquire the entire issued ordinary share capital of Raven Russia (Holdings) Cyprus Limited, which is the existing owner of all of the Group's Russian assets and related debt.

"In these extraordinary times it has become necessary to take extraordinary measures in order to protect all employees and stakeholders in our business. The combination of volatile markets and the continual risk of sanctions and counter sanctions necessitates this Transaction. We hope and pray for peace," RPG chairman Richard Jewson said.

The "events which began on 24 February 2022 and the subsequent impact of sanctions have made it impracticable for the business to continue in its current form," the company said. Particularly painful for the company are the foreign currency control measures imposed by the Russian authorities, as they prevent the conversion of ruble revenue collected from tenants into forex and its transfer to the parent company's accounts.

Raven was set up in 2005 specifically for investment in the Russian warehouse market and carried out an initial public offering on the LSE at that time; it received a secondary listing on the Moscow Exchange in 2018. Raven's portfolio includes class A logistics complexes with a combined area of about 1.9 million square meters in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rostov, Novosibirsk and Nizhny Novgorod.