Inkombank Leads Sweet Takeover Deal

A consortium of companies led by Russia's second biggest bank Inkombank announced Friday it had bought a controlling package of shares in the Babayevskoye candy factory, one of Moscow's five confectionery makers.


The consortium, which consists of Inkombank, Inkom Capital investment bank, the Servis-Tekhnologiya service equipment company, cocoa importer Coral and some other companies, bought the shares for $13 million. It intends to continue buying shares from individuals for one more week, said Sergei Kalugin, an Inkombank vice president.


He said the consortium had bought more than 50 percent in the Babayevskoye factory, which has between 16 to 18 percent of the Moscow candy market.


"The factory has become a part of our food holding and this will strengthen our and their market positions and financial positions," Kalugin said.


Babayevskoye is the second confectioner to be a takeover target. In July, Bank Menatep launched Russia's first public hostile takeover bid against Red October, eventually dropped in return for two seats on the chocolate factory's board.


Pioneer Securities, Babayevskoye's financial adviser, said last week an unknown group was attempting a hostile takeover of Babayevskoye. But on Friday, Pioneer vice president Alexander Tsapin said Inkombank had declared its intentions and eased the factory's worries. But he was wary to embrace the takeover. "We shall see how our negotiations with Inkombank go on," he said.


"We do not have a need to change the management of the factory," said Inkombank's Kalugin. "They work well enough and they are professional. We do not have any intentions to change the specialization of the factory."


The takeover consortium, which previously held a minority stake, had already invested $6 million in the factory and now plans to invest $25 million more by the end of the year, with an additional $5 million coming in 1996, Kalugin said.


The investment will go toward replacing aging equipment, said Sergei Nosenko, general director of Servis-Tekhnologiya, one of the consortium members and a contractor on the modernization project. His company last year purchased 29 percent of Babayevskoye at a voucher auction.


Galina Nekrasova, a trade expert at the Moscow Agency for Entrepreneurship Development, said the takeover bids for Red October and Babayevskoye were not coincidental.


"Our confectionery enterprises are some of the few companies that can attract foreign investors," she said. "By the quality of its produce the candy industry is one of those branches which comes up to international standards."


In a sweetener of his own, Kalugin said the takeover consortium would spend $1 million to provide apartments for Babayevskoye employees. He also said the consortium is holding talks with British merchant bank NM Rothschild & Sons Ltd. to provide consulting services to the company.


?Inkombank on Friday reported revenues of 588 billion rubles ($130 million) for the first nine months of the year, saying that its regional branches had compensated for losses in Moscow caused by August's interbank crisis.


Alexander Savkin, senior vice president of the bank told a news conference that revenues in the third-quarter were up $1 million from the second quarter to $37 million. But he did not give profit figures or comparisons with last year.


Inkombank officials criticized the press for publishing stories saying the bank was in a financial crunch as a result of the August crisis, and Savkin produced a document saying Inkombank had paid all the money it owed the Central Bank in obligatory reserves for the third quarter.


However, one Moscow banker, who asked not to be identified, doubted the rosy picture painted by Inkombank officials. "Revenues do not tell anything without expenditures," he said. "It is profit figures that mean something."