The Amur shipyard will be owned by Sberbank.
The Government has decided to admit private foreign investors to the Russian civil shipbuilding industry. A leading Singaporean shipyard is ready to invest up to $5 billion in the building of a new shipyard in the Far East, the president of the United Shipbuilding Corporation, Vladimir Pakhomov, announced to a conference on the development of the Far Eastern shipbuilding industry, which was held in Komsomolsk-on-Amur and was chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Russia's contribution is land and infrastructure, Mr Pakhomov added. He said that Russia's share in the joint venture would be at least 25%. The name of the company with which negotiations are conducted has not been disclosed.
The same conference decided to give the debt-ridden Amur shipyard a new owner. The enterprise, among other things, builds nuclear submarines. Mr Pakhomov said that the enterprise's private shareholders were ready to sell a 59% stake to their main creditor, Sberbank, for just a few thousand roubles. The bank will now sell on these shares on the same terms to the fully state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation. Such an anti-crisis measure has been used only once before to rescue NPO Saturn ,which was taken over by Russian Technology.
THE OWNER WILL QUIT OF HIS OWN ACCORD
The United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC), created on April 1, 2009, owns 17.9% of the Amur shipyard. The enterprise was privatised in 2006 in accordance with the federal property privatisation plan.
"One may wonder how an enterprise that builds nuclear submarines could have been privatised, but it happened, it is a fact of our history", Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov mused yesterday. He had reason to be surprised. At present the plant is controlled by the Concern of Medium and Small Tonnage Shipbuilding (KSMK) created in 2001 as part of reforming the shipbuilding industry. KSMK is now a major shipbuilding production and financial entity. One of its founders is the Interregional Investment Bank. The former chairman of the board of directors and president of the bank, Vadim Volkov (Deputy Finance Minister in 1999-2004) was arrested in November 2007 on charges of attempted theft of a large sum of government money by an organised group through fraud together with another Deputy Finance Minister, Sergei Storchak (the so-called "Algerian debt case").
The Amur shipyard owes Sberbank 13.9 billion roubles. The plant's total debts to its creditors amount to 36 billion roubles. The enterprise's commercial contracts have collapsed, as Vladimir Pakhomov had said earlier. Joint ventures with German and Norwegian companies did not get off the ground.
To make things worse, the enterprise has been struggling for nearly 20 years to fulfil the state order to build a large nuclear submarine Bars (of the same class as the sunken Kursk submarine).
"It is lamentable that the current owners of the plant have proved to be bad managers," Mr Putin told the conference. Creditors write off all the money that comes to the enterprise's accounts regardless of the purpose for which the money is intended. That explains among other things why the state is unable to rescue the plant by other means, for example, by increasing the state order.
Sergei Ivanov said that the change of owner of the Amur shipyard involved "no pressure, no arm-twisting".
THE BARS WILL PUT TO SEA
The decision to bail out the shipyard was made in Moscow on Saturday, according to Mr Putin. Sberbank, which is the enterprise's main creditor, has already reached an amicable settlement with the plant's owners.
Along with the change of owner the state will give the plant financial aid of more than 2.5 billion roubles. 1.9 billion roubles from that sum will pay for completion and tests of the Bars, another 581 million roubles will be disbursed under other state defence orders. In addition, Sberbank will extend a $4 million credit to the USC to rehabilitate the Amur shipyard.
"The figure should be double-checked and approved, but the source of redeeming the credit has been agreed with the bank in principle," Mr Putin said. All the money, he said, is allocated against the USC's pledge to develop a programme for the rehabilitation of the Amur enterprise before December 1 this year.
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HOW USC FUNCTIONS
The United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) was created on April 1, 2009 in order to consolidate Russian shipbuilding assets. The state contributed its 60% stake in the Neva Design Bureau, a 24.5% stake in Iceberg Central Design Bureau and a 14.99% stake in Alexeyev Central Hydrofoil Design Bureau. Besides, the USC has three 100% owned subsidiaries in the north-west, north and the Far East. They are: Western Shipbuilding Centre (St Petersburg), Northern Shipbuilding and Repair Centre (Severodvinsk) and Far Eastern Shipbuilding and Repair Centre (Vladivostok). Their authorised capital in turn consists of the government stakes in the following enterprises: Sevmash, Admiralty Shipyards, Zvyozdochka and Zvezda Far Eastern Plant; Northern Shipyard and Baltic Plant, which are part of the United Industrial Corporation; Primorye Shipbuilding Plant Yantar and Amur Shipyard, which are the assets of the Concern of Medium and Small Tonnage Shipbuilding; Vyborg Shipbuilding Plant controlled by Rossiya Bank; Krasnoye Sormovo Plant owned by the Marine and Oil and Gas Project Group, and other assets.
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RUSSIAN CREW BEATS OFF PIRATES
Russian navy men fought off a pirate attack on the Russian vessel the Spirit over the weekend, the head of Sovkomflot, Sergei Frank, told a meeting on the Far Eastern shipbuilding industry in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. "I would like to express thanks to the team of the Admiral Panteleyev (which beat off the attack, Gazeta)," said Mr Frank. He did not specify in whose territorial waters the attempt to hijack the Russian vessel took place.
By Maxim Tovkailo, Andrei Biryukov
