Maryansky Quarry LLC of businessman Igor Mazepa’s Concorde Capital group has been granted the right to buy out a special permit for the use of the Maryansky limestone quarry (Dnipropetrovs’k region) after the winning company lost this right by a decision of the State Service of Geology and Subsoil of Ukraine.
According to the Nadra.info portal, Forsazh LLC was deprived of the right to obtain a special permit because it did not enter into a sale and purchase agreement following the tender, where it offered UAH 151.2 million. The relevant decision was enshrined in the order of the Head of the State Service of Geology and Subsoil of February 15.
Thus, the right to buy out the special permit was transferred to Maryansky Quarry LLC, which offered UAH 52.2 million at the tender.
According to the State Service of Geology and Mineral Resources, the reserves of the Maryansky deposit are about 132 million tons of limestone.
According to Opendatabot, the owners of Maryansky Quarry LLC are Kryvyi Rih Cement (90.1%) and Natalia Kurkova (9.9%), while the ultimate beneficiaries are Ihor Mazepa and Vitaliy Antonov.
A search of the office of investment company Concorde Capital without a warrant from an investigating judge on January 18 resulted in the seizure of employees’ personal phones and computers, as well as about a dozen folders of materials that do not relate to the time and territory of the criminal proceedings, the company’s press service said.
“So, the office itself is now paralyzed, and this entails inevitable losses and loss of clients. In addition, it is impossible to imagine the normal operation of an investment company without a head,” the head of the press service, Anna Dyakonova, told Interfax-Ukraine on Monday.
Earlier in the day, State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) Director Oleksiy Sukhachov said that the procedural actions of law enforcement officers in the case of Concorde Capital CEO and founder Igor Mazepa did not lead to blocking or limiting the business, and the company can fulfill its obligations in full.
“At the moment, there have been no actions that would block the business or limit the activities of the Concorde Capital investment fund, which allows it to continue to operate and fulfill its investment obligations in full,” said the SBI director at a briefing in Kyiv.
For her part, Dyakonova added that one of the clients has suspended a loan agreement for construction in the SHELEST project.
According to her, Mazepa also had a number of meetings scheduled in Davos to attract investment in Kryvyi Rih Cement, but now the implementation of the company’s expansion project is in question.
She also said that Mazepa’s lawyers have already appealed the court’s January 19 ruling to place him under arrest with an alternative bail of UAH 349 million, and confirmed that the head of Concorde Capital’s house in his small homeland in Chernihiv region burned down.
As reported, on January 18, SBI officers together with the National Police detained Mazepa on the Ukrainian-Polish border on charges of organizing a scheme to illegally seize 2.4 hectares, which allegedly contain hydraulic structures of critical infrastructure – Kyiv HPP, and currently house the premium cottage community Goodlife Park. It was noted that three more people, including Mazepa’s brother, were detained in different regions of Ukraine, and searches were conducted at the office of Concorde Capital and the offices of some of its employees.
According to the SBI, at the end of 2023, eight suspects were served with a similar case involving 7 hectares of land in the neighborhood and other people were arrested. According to the database of court decisions, these are land plots involved “in the process of implementing a construction project of elite housing – a premium club cottage town Riviera Village,” which was originally developed by the Dragon Ukrainian Properties and Development (DUPD).
The SBI indicated that the defendants face up to 12 years in prison with confiscation of property.
Investment company Concorde Capital, which acquired the plant “Kuznya na Rybalskogo” at the end of 2022, is developing the concept of a new development project on the territory of the plant, said the head of Concorde Capital Igor Mazepa in a commentary to the publication “Economic Pravda”.
According to Mazepa, the concept is being developed jointly with foreign architectural agencies. The businessman expects to start construction after the completion of legal proceedings around the bankruptcy of “Kuzna na Rybalskogo”.
He also indicated that Concorde Capital is considering participation in joint investment in the project.
“Our initial plan was to attract an investor to resell the project. Now the situation has changed, so we do not rule out participation in joint investment,” Mazepa said.
He did not disclose the amount of the deal to acquire the plant “Kuznya na Rybalskogo”, previously owned by Sergei Tihipko, but indicated that the deal included assets encumbered by debts of the owner company Ewins Limited.
As reported, in the fall of 2018, co-owner of the TAS Group, businessman Sergei Tihipko acquired from Petro Poroshenko, at that time the President of Ukraine, PJSC “Plant “Kuznya na Rybalskoe” (formerly – PJSC “Leninskaya Kuznya”) – one of the well-known in the market of shipbuilding enterprises of Ukraine.
Until mid-November 2018, the main shareholder of PJSC “ZNKIF “Prime Assets Capital” (formerly – “Petro Poroshenko Fund”, Kiev) was the main shareholder with a 73.9067% stake in the shipyard privatized in 1995, the second largest shareholder with a 20.1280% stake was PJSC “ZNKIF “VIK”, which concentrated the assets of MP Igor Kononenko.
In December 2022, the Economic Court of Kyiv opened a bankruptcy case against PJSC “Plant “Kuznya na Rybalskogo” (Kyiv).
As reported, the TAS group planned to realize on the unused territory of the plant the Lipki Island City Resort project in partnership with the developer City One Development.
According to the National Commission on Securities and Stock Market, as of the second quarter of 2023, the main shareholder of Zavod Kuznya na Rybalskoe is Ewins Limited (94.0347%).
Concorde Consulting LLC, a member of the Concorde Capital group of companies, acting as an adviser on the privatization of PJSC President Hotel, has set its starting price at UAH 390 million, the company’s press service has reported.
The company said that they expect a significant increase in prices during the privatization auction due to the competition of bidders. At the same time, even a sale at the starting price will bring more benefits to the state than income in the form of annual dividends, according to Concorde Capital.
“There is no need to keep the President Hotel in state ownership. This is not a strategic facility. Today, the hotel is in a state that requires significant investments. In the near future, it can take a significant place on the hotel map of Kyiv precisely by attracting the necessary investments through privatization,” CEO of Concorde Capital Ihor Mazepa said.
According to him, the modernization of the hotel and its further operational management could create hundreds of jobs.
Thus, Concorde Capital recommends holding a competition for the privatization of the President Hotel in the near future.
Concorde Capital’s independent appraisal partners were Marcus Bureau, Creston GCG, BDO Consulting, Redcliffe Partners and Cushman&Wakefield.
Earlier, the starting price of the President Hotel at the privatization auction, according to UkraineInvest, was estimated at $12 million.
Recent changes in the financial market of Ukraine are favorable for the emergence of investor interest in new instruments, and the investment company Concorde Capital plans to bring about a dozen companies to an initial public offering (IPO) in two years, the founder and CEO of Concorde Capital, Ihor Mazepa, has said.
“I perceive this as a personal challenge and my personal ambition and ambition of my colleagues at Concorde: … I give myself, roughly speaking, two years to bring a good ten companies to an IPO,” Mazepa said at the presentation of the UAH 50-100 million IPO of the Veres Rivne People’s Club in Kyiv.
The CEO of the investment company believes that in recent years there has been a good trend in the market, which was previously observed in the neighboring markets of Eastern Europe and Russia. “When deposit rates fall, the investor has a feeling of discomfort. What I have seen for the last six or nine months: there has been such a huge trend that a class, a huge group of investors has begun to form in the country. Our fellow citizens really brought money to the stock market,” Mazepa said.
According to him, now this money goes to American and European exchanges.
“I want to walk this path, create or return this culture of investment to our country,” the CEO of Concorde Capital said.
He also said the company is developing a phone application for investors that will allow them to buy/sell securities online. According to him, the development cost is up to $1 million, and it can be launched before the end of this year or early next year.
The head of the investment group Concorde Capital, Ihor Mazepa, has announced the entry into a project of a cottage village and a hotel in the Shelest suburban complex and the construction of phase two of Goodlife Park in Vyshgorod district of Kyiv region.
At this stage it is planned to send more than $25 million to the implementation of the projects, and the total amount of investments in them, taking into account previous investments, will exceed $60-65 million.
“Previously, the main focus was on the growth of consumption, so we invested in the production of cardboard and cement, now we are betting on de-urbanization and suburban real estate. There are at least three more projects similar in scale to Goodlife and Shelest in the pipeline,” Mazepa said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
Thus, the group is investing about $10 million in the Shelest cottage community project, located next to the Shelest suburban complex near Kyiv. The housing area in the project will be 10,000 square meters.
In addition, on the territory of the Shelest complex, the construction of its hotel part with 100 rooms, including a SPA, continues. Investment in the hotel project is $15 million.
“In total, Shelest will have $30-35 million [of investment], taking into account previous investments,” Mazepa said.
The construction of phase two of the elite cottage town Goodlife Park has also started. The project provides for the construction of 30 cottages and additional infrastructure. According to Mazepa, the total investment in Goodlife Park is $35 million.
“In addition, we are considering a couple of similar projects in other directions, and we will look for co-investors for them. Accordingly, we expect a decent return on investment,” he said.
As Mazepa said, the de-urbanization trend and quarantine restrictions significantly increased the demand for suburban real estate, which stimulated an increase in rental rates and prices.
“We are witnessing a boom in the suburban real estate market: rental rates have grown by 1.5 times, especially in the premium segment. There are cases when they have doubled. We have simply sorted out everything decent that could be rented. And this, of course, affects the sale of new suburban real estate. If rents go up, then property prices also go up. And along with this, buying activity grows. This is what we have seen for the past nine months. This applies to Goodlife, Shelest, as well as many other suburban stories – everything is perfect there: a new demand began to appear, which we have not yet seen and which we did not expect,” he said.
Ukrainian seaports increase transshipment of cargo to 132 mln tonnes in 10 months
