Bruce Barnard, Special Correspondent | Jun 20, 2012 10:38AM EDT
Russia’s Summa investment and trading group moved closer to a $1.4 billion takeover of Fesco as it prepares to make an offer to minority shareholders in the owner of the country’s largest ocean container carrier.
Summa has already agreed to buy the 56-percent controlling stake of Russian entrepreneur Sergei Generalov to add to the 15 percent it has acquired in the open market.
Moscow-based Summa, controlled by its chairman Ziyavudin Magomedov, is also negotiating the purchase of a 3.8 percent Fesco stake held by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London.
The $10 billion-a-year company, whose transport assets include controlling stakes in the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port in the Black Sea and the Baltic port of Primorsk, is said to be eyeing a 7-percent stake in Fesco held by East Capital, a Swedish fund manager.
Fesco, which has annual revenues of $1 billion, owns Russia’s largest container shipping line and a container terminal in the Pacific port of Vladivostok and has a 21 percent stake in Transcontainer, the London-listed rail freight unit of state-controlled Russian Railways.
Summa, which is pushing to be a major player in Russia’s transport sector, is also investing $1 billion in an oil terminal in Rotterdam and is said to be mulling the construction of a container terminal in a port near Beijing.
Contact Bruce Barnard at brucebarnard47@hotmail.com.