Source Following the management company “Leader”, a lawsuit was filed by the “daughter” of AFK “Sistema”. On December 2, the management company Pervaya filed a lawsuit with the Moscow Arbitration Court to recover 2.13 billion rubles from VimpelCom (operating under the Beeline brand), follows from the filing cabinet of arbitration cases. It has not yet been taken into consideration. The grounds for the claims and other details are not given in the case file.
Until March 2022, MC Pervaya was called Sber Asset Management. The rebranding took place after Sber sold 51% in SB Blagosostoyanie LLC, the owner of Sber Asset Management and Sber Real Estate Funds management companies, as part of several transactions. As a result of one of the transactions, Sistema Telecom Assets LLC (a subsidiary of AFK Sistema) became the owner of a 49% stake in SB Blagosostoyanie LLC.
MC Pervaya manages pension savings, mutual funds, assets of insurance companies, banks and private investors, as well as public funds. As of September 30, 2022, the total volume of assets managed by MC Pervaya amounted to 1.44 trillion rubles.
VimpelCom and MC Pervaya declined to comment to Vedomosti.
Earlier, a lawsuit against VimpelCom for 1.75 billion rubles. also filed the Criminal Code “Leader”, wrote “Vedomosti”. Initially, the plaintiff did not ask for any interim measures, but on November 29, a few days after the announcement of the plans of the Dutch Veon Holdings B.V. sell Vimpelcom, filed a corresponding petition.
On November 24, it became known that Veon had agreed to sell VimpelCom to the Russian top management of the company, headed by CEO Alexander Torbakhov. As part of the deal, the Russian company was valued at about 370 billion rubles, but Veon will receive only 130 billion, the official statement said. The transaction is expected to close no later than June 1, 2023, with the parties entitled to an extension unless the necessary licenses and regulatory approvals are obtained.
Leader Management Company demanded to seize the funds on VimpelCom's bank accounts for the amount of claims and prohibit Veon from taking any actions related to the transaction, without including in its perimeter a clause that the new owner would assume obligations to the Russian holders of Veon Eurobonds in full or will issue replacement bonds on equivalent terms. The court refused to satisfy Leader's demands, but this decision can be appealed.
Formally, VimpelCom does not act as a debtor or guarantor for the holding's Eurobonds, but despite this, on September 20, the Russian operator received a letter from the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, which stated that the ministry “considers it expedient that PJSC VimpelCom ensure the fulfillment of obligations under Eurobonds to owners whose rights are recorded in the depositories of the Russian Federation,” Interfax wrote.
Considering that the activities of the First Management Company are similar to the activities of the Leader Management Company and consist in the management of mutual funds and trust management, the claim may also be related to payments on bonded loans, says Kirill Baranovsky, senior lawyer at the law firm Rustam Kurmaev and Partners. The amount of the claim, according to him, is determined by the size of the issuer's obligations under the bonds.
Alexander Zhuravlev, Managing Partner of EBR law firm, holds a similar position. “Based on the specifics of the activities of the First Management Company, and also taking into account the fact that the filed lawsuit is displayed in commercial systems that exchange information with a file of court cases in the securities category, it is likely that the new lawsuit is related to bonds,” he says. All this is related to the lawsuit that was previously filed by the Criminal Code “Leader”, the lawyer notes.
As in the case with Leader, the new lawsuit is unlikely to affect the sale of VimpelCom, adds Zhuravlev. But “if the trend continues and a critical mass of risks of recovery of significant amounts accumulates, this may become a reason for the buyer to refuse the transaction,” the lawyer emphasizes. However, he also does not rule out that the entire volume of problem bonds has already been included in the price of the deal.
Baranovsky also believes that the lawsuits are unlikely to hinder the closing of the sale of Vimpelcom, but they can affect its amount and terms in terms of guarantees of the buyer's rights. It is difficult to assess the chances of both management companies to secure payment guarantees from Vimpelcom at the current stage, he adds, since everything depends on the terms of the issue and the volume of rights under the bonds. the borrower to coordinate with the lender certain actions with assets or a corporate structure, says Pavel Katkov, lawyer, member of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Committee on Entrepreneurship in the Field of Media Communications. A softer form of such a commitment could be an assurance or guarantee, according to which the parties enter into a transaction, being in a certain ownership structure, with a certain composition of shareholders, he says. It may not necessarily be direct loans, but some form of loan or simply a large transaction that is ongoing and for which the party to the transaction is important who owns the company. “The sale of VimpelCom is a tectonic action that can shake up a whole series of their transactions, for which there are creditors for whom it is important who owns the company: foreign shareholders or the Russian team,” says the lawyer.
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