Fintonik LLC (Kyiv) won the auction held by the state-owned Oschadbank on December 10 for the sale of a pool of loans to the Ukrlandfarming group of companies (Ukrlandfarming, ULF), offering the minimum possible price of UAH 1.13871 billion at a starting price of UAH 5.03852 billion.
According to data from the Prozorro.Prozori system, Fintonik, 80% of which is owned by Andriy Shpylka from Kryvyi Rih and 20% by former SCM director of new business development Mykola Nesterenko, was the only participant in the auction.
According to the protocol, the remuneration of the electronic platform SKOMPANI LLC, through which the application was submitted, amounted to UAH 17.08 million and will be paid from the UAH 75.58 million guarantee deposit.
Earlier, Oschadbank noted that this stage of the sale, at which the minimum price was reduced by 44%, was the final one, because after a series of previous auctions with a gradual reduction, the possibility of further price adjustments had been exhausted.
The auction included claims under loan agreements and related collateral agreements of borrowers — the ULF group of companies (PJSC Raise-Maksymko, PJSC Agroholding Avangard, Imperovo Foods LLC) and Pakko Holding LLC.
“The current auction is the last chance for potential investors to purchase a pool of secured loans, which includes production assets throughout Ukraine: elevators, poultry farms, an egg processing plant, etc., as well as guarantees from individuals and legal entities,” Oschadbank emphasized. It noted that if the auction is unsuccessful, it will proceed with the active implementation of a liquidation scenario to collect the debt.
In early December this year, the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) fined TNA Corporate Solutions LLC (USA) and American citizen Nicholas Piazza (Nicholas Piazza) for violating the law when concentrating shares in the authorized capital of 14 enterprises of the Ukrlandfarming group, which was one of the largest agricultural holdings in Eurasia.
The agricultural holding claims that it remains one of the largest in Ukraine despite $1.2 billion in losses due to Russia’s military aggression. A significant portion of ULF’s financial obligations have been in default since 2017. In November 2017, a group of international creditors of Ukrlandfarming and Avangard estimated the total amount of ULF’s debt obligations at approximately $1.65 billion in a letter to the Ukrainian government: about $1.25 billion in debt obligations to international creditors and about $400 million to Ukrainian banks (including state-owned banks). In turn, according to their data, the debt to international creditors at that time consisted of approximately $775 million in Eurobonds and $475 million in credit debt to European and American banks (and their respective credit risk insurers).
In October last year, Ukrlandfarming announced that the lawsuits filed by Gramercy Funds Management LLC and its affiliates against Bakhmatyuk, Piazzi, Oleksandr Yaremenko, SP Capital Management LLC, TNA Corporate Solutions LLC, and/or Maltofex Ltd had been voluntarily withdrawn with a final waiver of claims, and the parties had entered into a confidential settlement agreement in connection therewith.
“Now that the litigation against Mr. Bakhmatyuk has been concluded, the company can more freely negotiate with creditors and focus on growing and rebuilding its business after losing approximately half of its value due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” the release said at the time.
According to the NBU, as of early September this year, Oschadbank, with total assets of UAH 479.1 billion (12.3% of the total), ranked second among 60 banks in terms of this indicator.
