He himself is a defendant in a criminal case against the ex-governor of the Penza region Ivan Belozertsev.
Following the wave of lawsuits against Biotek LLC, there were also applications for bankruptcy. In October last year, it was filed by Ellara LLC with a claim amounting to 15 million rubles. On March 7, the Moscow Arbitration Court granted the petition for the introduction of temporary supervision in the company. It is curious that at the same time, Ellara’s debt under the cession agreement was assigned to Biopharm LLC back in November last year.
In court, she was called affiliated to the debtor: she is a member of Biotek. This fact gave the court the right to lower the priority of the creditor in satisfying the claims. Moreover, since the end of 2021, there has been a property crisis of the debtor: in the presence of significant assets, the percentage of non-current assets was insignificant. The details were given by the court, having studied the financial performance of the company and noting that none of the parties in the case provided evidence of success.
The organization’s assets for the entire period decreased by 7.4 billion rubles (68.7%), equity – by 94.4%, which is interpreted negatively. The decrease in assets is associated with a decrease in inventories, receivables, and cash. In the liabilities side of the balance sheet, the largest decrease was in accounts payable, retained earnings, and long-term borrowings.
At the end of 2021, the organization’s autonomy ratio was 0.03, which indicates an insufficient share of equity. The coefficient of provision with own working capital was equal to -0.06, over the year it “very significantly” decreased – by 0.2, at the end of the year it did not meet the norm. A similar story with the investment coverage ratio – it fell to 0.15 (-0.13), becoming “significantly below the norm.”
The ratio of material reserves for the year rapidly decreased – from 0.37 to -0.22 (-0.59), taking on a “critical value”. The amount of short-term accounts payable of the organization significantly exceeds the amount of long-term debt (87.9% and 12.1%, respectively). The value of the current liquidity ratio is also below the norm (1.07 against the normative value of 1.8). Over the year, it fell by 0.28 points.
The lack of liquid assets to pay off term liabilities is also evidenced by the non-normative quick liquidity ratio – 0.77 at a rate of 1.
In 2021, Biotech received a loss of 1.6 billion rubles (12.7% of revenue). Although a year earlier she had a profit of 310 million rubles. During the year, sales revenue and expenses for ordinary activities decreased by 19.1 billion rubles – by 17.1 billion rubles. Moreover, in percentage terms, the change in revenue (-59.1%) is ahead of the change in expenses (-53.5%).
– The organization received a loss both from sales and, in general, from financial and economic activities, which led to the negative values of all key profitability indicators for this period, – the court documents say.
In 2021, the organization for ordinary activities received a loss of 12.7 kopecks from each ruble of sales revenue. There is a negative trend in the profitability of ordinary activities compared to this indicator for the same period last year (-13.7 kopecks). And the negative dynamics of the financial result before interest payable and taxation (EBIT) per ruble of revenue of Biotek LLC (-16.3 kopecks from this indicator for the same period last year (01.01–12.31.2020).
From the positive: net assets exceed the authorized capital, however, for the entire analyzed period, there was a decrease in the value of net assets.
As a result, the court recognized Biopharm’s claims as justified, introduced temporary supervision and appointed a temporary manager. Consideration of the case on the merits is scheduled for August 21.
Recall that the main founder (77%) of “Biotek” is Evgenia Shpigel, the wife of Boris Shpigel. Through a distribution corporation, it also owns the remaining 23% stake in the authorized capital.
Boris Spiegel was arrested in 2021 along with Ivan Belozertsev, Governor of the Penza Region, to whom, according to investigators, Spiegel gave a bribe of 20 million rubles, a Mercedes Viano and a Breguet watch. The case has been submitted to the court, which, most likely, will be an exit court and will be held in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center. This is due to the poor health of Mr. Spiegel: almost immediately from the moment of his arrest, he has been in the SIZO hospital.
Prior to these events, Biotek was one of the largest drug suppliers in Russia: at the end of 2020, the company ranked 9th in the ranking of pharmaceutical distributors according to DSM Group.
In his portfolio – more than 13 thousand contracts worth 96.8 billion rubles. At the same time, the number of contracts for 2021 decreased by 47% (12.7 billion rubles) – the worst figure in the last three years. As a result, already in the first half of 2021, Biotech dropped to 16th place in the DSM Group rating. And according to the results of the first half of 2022, the company also dropped out of the TOP-25 largest pharmaceutical distributors in the country.
Experts believe that after the arrest of Spiegel, regional authorities are wary of cooperation with the company, which affects government contracts, which were the main source of revenue. At the same time, they are sure that even before the acquisition of the asset by investors it will not come: with debts and open bankruptcy, it does not look attractive.
– In relation to the company, most likely, bankruptcy proceedings will be initiated and supervision will be introduced. The lawsuit load of Biotek is so significant that the scenario of liquidation of a legal entity in such a situation is unlikely. It is unlikely that the asset will be acquired by a third-party investor, since it does not look very attractive with debts, she stated.
Reference. Biotek was founded in 1991 by businessman Boris Shpigel. In 2003–2013 he was a senator from the Penza region. The company is part of the group of the same name, which also includes drug production plants – Marbiopharm in Yoshkar-Ola and Biodez in Lytkarino (Moscow region). Its portfolio included drugs for the treatment of HIV and diabetes, as well as oncological, cardiological, neurological and other diseases.
