Vladimir Nemirovsky became the sole owner of the Stalkanat-Silur plant.
Odessa-based Stalkanat-Silur PJSC announced the acquisition of a sole owner. Cypriot Bomberio Holdings Limited sold 49,9% of its shares to an individual, thus concentrating 100% of the company's shares. It's not difficult to determine who this individual is. According to the plant's official financial statements as of early 2016, Volodymyr Nemirovsky, the former chairman of the Odessa Regional State Administration and former head of the local branch of the Front of Change party, owned 50,01% of the company's shares.
Stalkanat-Silur is Ukraine's largest manufacturer of hardware products (ropes, wire, and fiber), with an annual turnover of over UAH 1 billion. For many years, the company was the property of Mark Becker and the shareholders of the Odessa-based Pivdenny Bank. Yuri Rodin, who became Vladimir Nemirovsky's financial partners at the beginning of the last decade. As DS reported, the Pivdenny Bank group became interested in the Odessa-based Stalkanat OJSC (which became the basis for the Stalkanat-Silur company's business) in the early 2000s, following a tip from Oleg Dubina, then head of Kryvorizhstal. He asked Rodin and Bekker to support Stalkanat financially to help it pay off its debts to the Kryvorizhstal steel plant. The Odessans met with the plant's management, provided it with a loan, and simultaneously purchased approximately 30% of its shares. Later, together with Nemirovsky, they acquired full control over the plant. The latter became the managing partner in this business.
The plant's hard times began in 2011, after Viktor Yanukovych came to power. Searches and document seizures began at the plant, prompting Nemirovsky to flee to Israel, accusing it of "harassment." Ivan Avramov — a business partner of Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, one of the most influential "grey cardinals" of the Party of Regions. Ivanyushchenko, however, dismissed these accusations as baseless rumors.
One way or another, but it was then that the shareholders of Pivdenny Bank withdrew from the share capital of Stalkanat-Silur PJSC, according to DS, and Nemirovsky and his business partner Sergey Faermark The shares were re-registered to offshore companies. This is precisely why rumors of the plant's final sale began circulating in late 2013. At that time, the buyer of the controlling stake in Stalkanat-Silur PJSC was an unnamed individual, known only as a Ukrainian citizen. The deal was approved by the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine: "Permission has been granted to an individual—a Ukrainian citizen—to acquire shares...," the antimonopoly committee's press service stated. However, as it turned out, the opposite was true: Nemirovsky officially returned to the shareholder group and has now bought out his partner's stake. According to DS sources, Bomberio Holdings is linked to the aforementioned Sergei Faermark, who has been a People's Front MP since 2014.
By becoming the sole owner of Stalkanat-Silur PJSC, Nemirovsky added to his already numerous problems.
The Silur plant, which he controls, is based in the Donetsk region, which is controlled by terrorists from the DPR. Back in 2014, the plant was shut down, and its personnel were evacuated to territory controlled by the Ukrainian government. The current condition of the remaining equipment is unknown. This is largely why this once-profitable enterprise is posting significant losses—up to 200 million hryvnias per year (revenue in 2015 was 1,31 billion hryvnias). The situation on the domestic steel rope market is also far from favorable, having significantly contracted due to the Russian occupation of part of the Donbas, where the traditional consumers of these products—the coal mines—are based. But there are also positive developments: as DS previously reported, in early 2016, the European Commission decided to reduce the anti-dumping duty on imported steel ropes produced by Stalkanat-Silur from 51,8% to 10,5%. The new duty rate came into effect on January 28, the day after the decision was published in the EU's Official Journal. However, despite this, there has been no significant increase in shipments of these products to the EU yet—in the first half of this year, shipments barely exceeded $200.
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