Page 20 - BNE_magazine_bne_September 2019

20 I Companies & Markets bne September 2019
Ukraine's battered Odesa Port Plant relaunches operations
bne IntelliNews
Ukraine's battered Odesa Port Plant (OPP), which has been standing idle since late April 2018, restarted its operations in early August, according to the company's first deputy director Mykola Schurikov.
The state has tried to privatise the indebted plant several times already but failed to attract any bidders thanks to its debts
to oligarchs. OPP's debts for supplied natural gas before the nation's state-owned natural gas monopoly Naftogaz exceed UAH1.5bn ($60mn) plus penalties.
"After more than a year of downtime, OPP launched production of ammonia and carbamide," Schurikov wrote on his Facebook page this week. "Although there are a few days of hassle ahead, we can say that we are in the finishing straight."
OPP relaunched operations under a contract of toll processing with Ukrainian company Agro Gas Trading. According to an agreement between OPP and this firm, the minimum period
Sberbank dodges Brexit risks by opening Cypriot London branch
Jason Corcoran in London
Russia’s biggest lender Sberbank has dodged the fallout of a potential no-deal Brexit by opening a branch
of its Cypriot business in the heart of London, bne IntelliNews can reveal.
The cunning plan will allow Sberbank’s traders in London to continue to offer services across the entire European Union if Britain, under the stewardship of its new Prime Minister Boris Johnson, crashes out of the EU without any deal.
www.bne.eu
of cooperation between the companies will be four months with the possibility of further extension as agreed by the supervisory board of the refinery.
Each month, OPP should receive about 60 million cubic meters (mcm) of natural gas, Schurikov added.
Ukrainian and foreign investors have had no interest in privatisation of OPP over the past years due to its disastrous financial conditions, despite the fact that former Ukrainian economy minister Aivaras Abromavicius was trying to present OPP as a crown jewel of the country's privatisation.
In 2018, the starting price in the privatisation of OPP was cut by 10-times to $54mn, however, even now there are serious doubts that the government will be able to sell its 99.567% stake in OPP. In December 2017, Kyiv failed to sell the stake via a second privatisation tender.
The bank outlined the impact various “exit scenarios” would have on its business in a recent filing to UK Companies House.
“If the company loses its ability to ‘passport’ freely into
EU countries, it would be prevented from accessing its EU-domiciled clients,” explained Sberbank UK in the filing. “The planned mitigation for such an eventuality would be to offer clients the facility to face another group company, most