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Vedomosti
RCS chief Sergei Yashechkin |
It didn't officially exist before last month and won't actually start working
until next month, but the nation's newest big-ticket consortium is already
expecting to net a tidy profit of up to $200 million next year.
Sergei Yashechkin, the head of Russian Communal Systems, a new consortium
of powerful financial industrial groups created to run housing and utility
services across the nation, said in an interview published Tuesday that
the new company expects to earn a 7 percent to 10 percent profit on sales
of $2 billion next year.
"[We expect sales] of 60 billion rubles next year out of a total
volume of sales in the sector of 550 billion rubles," he told Vedomosti.
"Our share of the market will not exceed 15 percent."
Yashechkin said RCS will establish regional subsidiaries that will
take over all local housing-service functions, ensuring supplies of water,
power, heat and gas, television and radio access, garbage collection,
sewage
service and general building maintenance. The first of the 12 subsidiaries
to be established this year will begin operating next week, he said,
although he did not specify where.
The brainchild of Unified Energy Systems CEO Anatoly Chubais, the
consortium includes Gazprom, through its pocket bank Gazprombank, Interros,
Renova, Evrofinance bank, YevrazHolding and Kuzbassrazrezugol. UES and
Gazprombank each own a 25 percent stake in RCS, while the other five members
of the consortium each have 10 percent.
RCS, which was officially registered last month, plans to spend $700
million overhauling the badly neglected sector in the areas it operates
over
the next five years, $200 million of which will come from shareholders.
Yashechkin said RCS was surprised at the interest regional
administrations had taken in the project and that the number of regions
with
which the new company is negotiating has ballooned from an initial 10
two
months ago to more than 30 now.
Yashechkin denied reports that RCS will acquire housing assets owned
by regional administrations in exchange for the debts to UES and Gazprom
that many regions have amassed over the past decade. He said RCS will
be
managing assets under long-term rental agreements.
"This variant is the basis for RCS," he said.
However, he said he found "no contradictions" with the fact
that UES's
official corporate restructuring strategy says that one of the measures
the
national power monopoly is exploring to resolve its payment problem is
acquiring assets in exchange for debts.
UES and Gazprom are owed a collective 46 billion rubles ($1.5 billion)
from the communal housing sector.
Yashechkin said some UES and Gazprom assets might be included in the
charter capital of RCS or some of its subsidiaries "if it is economically
justified." If that happens, UES and Gazprom would likely get stakes
in
those subsidiaries directly.
"I don't exclude that in some of our subsidiaries we might become
minority shareholders."
Opponents of Chubais say RCS is nothing but another attempt to grab
power.
"A large supermonopoly structure is being created that is trying
to replace the state monopoly with a private monopoly," Yabloko leader
Grigory Yavlinsky said Sunday.
"[Bills] will grow and prices on services will increase, but the
quality will not get any better just because one monopoly is being replaced
by another."
Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent State Duma deputy, said he is not
against the creation of RCS, but he finds the project "risky"
because Russia
might end up with one company "that controls electricity tariffs,
gas
tariffs and housing fees."
See also:
the original at
www.themoscowtimes.com
Housing and Utilities
Reform
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