/ world today news/ The shares of foreigners in Unipro and Fortum – transferred to the management of the Federal Property Management Agency
THE MIRROR MEASURES
Over the past year, Russia’s property abroad has been in danger – after the start of the special operation, Western countries blocked Russian state and private assets. Several packages of sanctions have already been introduced against Moscow, which froze half of our country’s foreign exchange reserves in the amount of 330 billion dollars.
The end of such a policy is not in sight – recently, for example, it became known that Germany has created the necessary legal framework for the sale of Rosneft’s assets, which were previously de facto appropriated by Berlin. Now the German authorities are preparing to put up for sale a Russian oil refinery in the city of Shved.
In response to the hostilities, President Putin signed a decree on measures in the event that Russia, its citizens or legal entities are deprived of ownership of assets in “hostile” countries. Even in the event of a threat of similar actions by other countries, Russia already has the right to take temporary control over their property, including the shares of foreign organizations in Russian companies.
The relevant presidential decree of April 25 is provided with a list of the property that has already been included in the new regulation. For now, it is only about securities – 83.7% of the shares of the Public Joint Stock Company (PJSC) Unipro, owned by the German holding company Uniper SE, and about 98% of the shares of PJSC Fortum came under the external control of the Federal Agency for Property Management , which are controlled by the Finnish state-owned energy company Fortum.
In addition to securities, temporary management in Russia may include movable and immovable property of foreign individuals and companies located on the territory of our country, their shares in the authorized capital of Russian legal entities, as well as property rights.
The Federal Property Management Agency explained that the listed power assets are of paramount importance for the stable functioning of Russia’s energy sector. To appreciate the importance of Unipro and Fortum, it is enough to recall that they include 12 thermal power plants (5 of them – in Unipro and 7 – in Fortum), including Surgutskaya GRES-2, Shaturskaya GRES, Smolenskaya GRES, Nyaganskaya GRES (one of the largest and most modern thermal power plants in Russia) etc.
The asset portfolio of Fortum (formerly PJSC UES Russia) also includes a wind farm in the Ulyanovsk region and solar power plants in the Orenburg and Bashkortostan regions. It is obvious that the companies are of strategic importance to the country’s economy, but control over them still belonged to foreign holdings. However, the ownership of the companies has not changed,
Russian experts already suggest that Unipro and Fortum will now be subject to the requirement to pay dividends like state-owned companies – that is, at least 50% of net profit. And given that the Federal Property Management Agency (the federal enforcement agency) became the interim manager, the dividends will go to the state.
FOREIGNERS DEPRIVED OF BILLION PROFITS
– Of course, this is not confiscation, these are retaliatory measures against the actions of unfriendly countries, which allowed themselves, first, to block the gold and foreign currency reserves of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, that is, they encroached on the sovereign property of the Russian Federation.
In addition, bank accounts of Russian state companies were frozen and arrested, persons who did business in these countries, what can I say – hostile actions affected many persons who had accounts there, real estate, investments – all this is also blocked – said Maria Yarmush, lawyer, specialist in civil and international law, to Komsomolskaya Pravda radio. – Therefore, the President of the Russian Federation, in the form of retaliatory mirror measures, transferred the assets of Western companies located on the territory of the Russian Federation under the management of the Federal Property Management Agency.
And these are primarily the huge assets of thermal power plants, which are owned by German and Finnish corporations and receive huge profits. For example, the German company earned 105 billion rubles last year (we are talking about Unipro, whose revenues in 2022 amount to 105.8 billion rubles – Ed.). But now foreign corporations cannot dispose of these assets – they cannot sell them, they cannot vote and participate in the management of the companies, they cannot make a profit.
How will the situation develop further? According to the expert, there are lists of foreign companies that receive billions of dollars of income from sources in the Russian Federation, their assets are countless, and in the same way, these assets can be transferred to the management of the Federal Property Management Agency without the right to dispose of them. with them.
This means that by managing these assets, the Federal Property Management Agency will not be able to sell them to anyone. And it is still difficult to say how the situation will develop further – now a lot depends on the geopolitical situation.
So far, the market has reacted optimistically to the news of the introduction of interim management. Shares of Russian energy companies owned by Germany’s Uniper and Finland’s Fortum rose sharply – by more than 10% – during trading on the Moscow Stock Exchange.
Translation: EU
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