State-owned Oschadbank has put up for auction on the “Prozorro.Sales” platform a claim against ESU LLC, which owns 92.79% of the shares in JSC “Ukrtelecom,” with a starting price of 2.65 billion hryvnia, the bank announced on Friday.
The claim arose under a securities purchase agreement dated April 25, 2013, under which Oschadbank acquired 2 million bonds of ESU LLC with a total par value of 2 billion UAH.
The auction is scheduled for October 6 at 12:55 p.m., and the submission of bids will close on October 5 at 8:00 p.m. Bidding will follow the English-style ascending-bid model.
The starting price of the lot is 2.65 billion UAH excluding VAT; the minimum bid increment is 1%, or 26.45 million UAH; and the security deposit is 5%, or 132.27 million UAH.
Banks and other financial institutions that are legally authorized to provide funds and bank metals on credit are eligible to participate in the auction.
If the English-style auction does not take place, Oschadbank may subsequently offer the claim rights in a Dutch-style auction with a reduced starting price.
As previously reported, in November 2022, Oschadbank had already put the claim against “ESU” up for sale via OpenMarket (the State Enterprise “SETAM” of the Ministry of Justice) with a starting price of 1.82 billion UAH; however, the auction did not take place due to a lack of eligible bidders.
Following a tender announced in the fall of 2010, the State Property Fund of Ukraine sold 92.79% of Ukrtelecom’s shares in early 2011 to the Ukrainian subsidiary of the Austrian company EPIC—ESU LLC—for 10.58 billion hryvnias. The SCM Group, owned by Ukrainian businessman Rinat Akhmetov, acquired ESU in 2013.
In 2024, the Kyiv Commercial Court opened bankruptcy proceedings against ESU LLC.