Page 101 - RusRPTAug19

number one airport in the Moscow Air Hub with 50% of the total passenger traffic. Between January and June 2019, the number of passenger on international flights was 12,324mn people – 11.5% increase from the same period last year. This growth in passenger traffic has been attributed to the increased demand for flights to Antalya, Beijing, Bangkok and Rome. Passenger traffic on domestic flights for the first half of 2019 increased by 17.3% and totalled 11,080mn people. The increase in the domestic traffic is due to the growth in popularity of destinations such as Sochi, Simferopol, Vladivostok and Kaliningrad. The most popular international destinations during H1 2019 were Antalya, Paris, Yerevan, Beijing and Tel Aviv. The most popular domestic destinations were St. Petersburg, Sochi, Simferopol, Yekaterinburg and Krasnodar.
Troubled Russian carrier UTAir improved its RUB60bn ($1bn) banking debt restructuring offer, increasing the interest rate from symbolic 0.01% to 9% and shortening the maturity of the loans, RBC business daily reported on July 29 citing unnamed banking sources.
As reported by bne IntelliNews, in June UTAir warned its creditors that it will not be able to fully repay the interest on loans worth RUB109.2bn ($1.7bn). Prior to that in April the carrier asked for more credit relief, trying to relapse bond repayment and banking loans by 35 years.
But now UTAir reportedly is ready to increase the interest to be paid on the largest syndicated loan, as well as to shorten maturities on some outstanding credit lines. Total debt of UTAir amounts to RUB75.8bn, out of which RUB39.1bn account for two syndicated loans issues by 11 banks, on which UTAir already technically defaulted.
According to the sources of RBC, some creditors are still not satisfied with the proposed conditions and the negotiations are to continue.
Out of the syndications a third is directly owed to Sberbank, with the other two largest participants in the syndicate are Trust bank (35%) and Rossiya (20%). The state has also made a direct loan to the company of another RUB17.4bn, which is under the management of Sberbank, bringing the share of the debt under Sberbank’s control to just over half of the outstanding debt.
9.2.4 Construction & Real estate corporate news
Russia will build the tallest residential building in Europe. The One Tower project will be constructed on the territory of Moscow City, the Russian capital’s financial district, with apartments in the very center of the business life of the capital, Albert Suniyev, the first deputy general director of Mosinzhproekt, said Vedomosti reported. The height of the planned building is 405m with 101 floors plus three underground floors, making it the tallest building in Europe. The future skyscraper will be 33 m higher than the Federation Tower, which is currently the tallest building in Russia. The building will be exclusively dedicated to residential and will not have any commercial space, said Olga Shirokova, director of consulting and analytics at Knight Frank.
O1 Properties, the largest developer of A-class commercial property in Moscow, plans to diversify its business by setting up a chain of co-working spaces and its own business centre management company, Vedomosti daily
101 RUSSIA Country Report August 2019 www.intellinews.com