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Top Stories
December 7, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 5
Russia’s financial sector has again been roiled in the past two years by sanctions and a slide
in commodity prices. Other major private banks such Bank Otkritie, Promsvyazbank and B&N Bank have blown up and have had to be rescued by the state.
The winner in the shakeout has been the state behemoths Sberbank and VTB, which have seen their market share and profits rocket.
Aven predicts the Central Bank’s clean-up of
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis is the king of the woods
Minister of the Czech Republic Andrej Babis. And the forests? They are now in the worst shape since the 19th century, according to experts.
Babis is a billionaire tycoon, who in part built his fortune in the agro-sector. The Czech Republic’s second-richest man, Babis has long been known as one of the most influential people in Central European agriculture. Until 2017, he was the sole owner of the Prague-headquartered Agrofert holding, a massive enterprise control- ling 230 companies in multiple countries across Central Europe.
Although Babis is formally no longer the owner of the company — he was forced to transfer ownership of Agrofert to trust funds controlled by family members and lawyers when he became prime minister to comply with new conflict
of interest laws — the nature of his informal relationship with the company has become the object of investigation. Babis himself vehemently denies any wrongdoing.
Whatever Babis’ current role at the company, the
the sector will see the number of lenders shrink further to about 300 in the next few years from 500 now but he fully realises that Alfa won’t benefit.
“In general, the banking system is healthy - largely thanks to the Central Bank, which provided it,” Aven told a lecture at the prestigious MGIMO university in April this year. “The main problem
is the share of state-owned banks, which control 72% of assets.”
With additional reporting by Ben Aris.
business is still up and running. Although it is best known for its presence in agriculture and media, Agrofert is a major player in a number of other fields, including forestry since 2011.
Likely incentivised by the modified tendering rules of the state-owned Czech Forests — a move that handed all the trump cards to the biggest players — Agrofert bought two forestry companies: Uniles and Wotan Forest. In just seven years, Uniles grew from a small, regional company to one of the larg- est forestry firms in the country. Receiving more than $90mn worth of state contracts, it more than quadrupled its revenues.
For every winner there is a loser. In this case, apart from small and medium-sized businesses, it was the trees themselves that perhaps paid the highest price. Today the Czech Republic’s mainly coniferous forests are facing the worst bark beetle infestation in at least 200 years. According to a number of experts interviewed by bne IntelliNews, the new tendering rules for work in state-owned forests, which brought quick riches to compa- nies like Uniles, have been one of the problems along with the extreme droughts that have led to the ecological catastrophe the country currently faces. The origins of the story go back a decade.
Money comes first
On January 1, 2009, Svatopluk Sykora, the former CEO of Aliachem, an Agrofert-controlled chemical