Austrian Raiffeisenbank and UNIQA Insurance Group AG have agreed to sell shares in their Russian subsidiary insurance company Raiffeisen Life. It will go to Renaissance Life (part of the Renaissance Insurance group).
The key beneficiary of Renaissance Insurance is Boris Jordan. Another part of the shares belongs to structures associated with the oligarch Roman Abramovich and his partners.
As we found out, another beneficiary of Renaissance Life could be the owner of BKS Holding, Oleg Mikhasenko. In this case, if a deal with Raiffeisenbank takes place, it could hypothetically become the owner of one of the largest insurance businesses in the country. And of the Jordan-Abramovich-Mikhasenko trio, it is Jordan who may turn out to be the weak link. Will Abramovich and Mikhasenko force him out of this business?
The Renaissance Life deal has not yet been completed; regulatory approval is required. The amount of the proposed transaction is not disclosed.
Renaissance Insurance is one of the largest insurance companies in the country. 52.12% of the shares of Renaissance Insurance Holding LLC belong to the Sputnik Group of Boris Jordan (2022 wealth: $1 billion).
The united Renaissance Insurance group appeared in 2017 as a result of a transaction between the Renaissance Insurance group and NPF Blagosostoyanie. This happened with the participation of the notorious Baring Vostok fund. In 2021, the founder of the fund, Michael Calvey, was sentenced to a suspended sentence of five years and six months in a criminal case of embezzlement at Vostochny Bank.
Initially, the organizational and legal form of Renaissance Insurance was JSC. During this period, Boris Jordan experienced financial difficulties. Roman Avdeev agreed to help. In 2018, his MKB Bank opened a credit line for 2.7 billion rubles to Jordan’s structure. However, already in 2019, the bail was lifted and Jordan paid off.
This happened thanks to the placement of a large bond issue worth 3 billion rubles. Initially, the purpose of the issue was announced to be the refinancing of a loan received from MKB Bank.
However, paying off debts in itself does not imply the availability of serious funds for the further maintenance and development of the business. And in 2021, Mr. Jordan found new partners - the structures of the oligarch Roman Abramovich. He could also help Jordan pay off Avdeev when placing bonds, counting on a share in the business.
As a result, by decision of the participants, the JSC was reorganized into a PJSC. Abramovich's Grano LLC received 9.99% of the structure's shares, and Invest AG LLC, which represents the interests of the oligarch's partners, Alexander Abramov and Alexander Frolov, had 9.55%. Another 4.33% was received by another member of Abramovich’s team, Andrei Gorodilov, and 4.77% went to Ob Capital, President of Invest AG Sergei Bratukhin.
The deal with Raiffeisenbank will significantly strengthen Renaissance's position in the Russian insurance market. However, somehow the partners managed to get into contractual relations with the structures of the head of BKS Holding Oleg Mikhasenko, and now they may be left without Renaissance Life altogether.
Appearance of Mikhasenko in “Renaissance Life”
All 100% of the shares of Renaissance Life are registered with Renprime JSC, which provides consulting on commercial activities and management. The founders of Renprime are Renaissance Insurance Group LLC and Renconsult JSC.
Both structures experienced serious financial difficulties. Shares (52%) of Renaissance Insurance Holding LLC in Renaissance Insurance Group LLC were pledged to MKB Bank by Roman Avdeev. We are talking about the period when Jordan’s structure was a joint-stock company, not a PJSC.
After the reorganization and entry into the shareholders of Abramovich and Co., Oleg Mikhasenko suddenly appeared there. In 2022, all 100% of Renprime’s shares were pledged to BKS Consulting LLC, which is part of Oleg Mikhasenko’s BKS Holding LLC. At the same time, the assets of Renprime itself exceed 15 billion rubles.
It turns out that if the scenario is negative for Boris Jordan and his closest partners, Renprime, and therefore Renaissance Life, may end up being owned by Mikhasenko’s structures. In this case, the deal with Raiffeisenbank will turn it into one of the largest life and health insurers in the Russian Federation.
Please note the following: the pledge agreement was drawn up on June 28, 2021. And the date for entering information about the pledge into the Unified State Register of Legal Entities is December 6, 2022. Those. About a year and a half passed between these events, which may indicate a possible conflict. Couldn't you agree?
It is also possible that Jordan and his partners themselves could decide to split up their business. Another possible scenario is that Roman Abramovich, who controls a significant part of Renaissance Insurance, and Oleg Mikhasenko, who holds Renaissance Life as collateral, could simply squeeze Jordan out of the insurance business.
Who will you go with?
Meanwhile, Oleg Mikhasenko has already dealt with Renaissance in the past. Only then did we talk about Renaissance Capital Bank (the main beneficiary is Mikhail Prokhorov’s ONEXIM), some of whose top managers went to work for an entrepreneur who was then planning to take his broker BCS to an IPO.
We are talking about the ex-head of DMA at Renaissance Capital Stanislav Surikov, director of the London office Mike Smith, operating director Rizvan Kayani and director of client relations Yulia Yaroslavtseva.
The new employees reported to the head of the investment banking division of BCS, a native of Bank of America, Ken Chargeishvili. However, Mikhasenko subsequently decided to replace him with his fellow countryman, first deputy chairman of FC Otkrytie Roman Lokhov, who was Surikov’s competitor in the market.
As a result, Lokhov and Surikov did not work well together, and Mikhasenko probably ruined relations with both Otkritie and Renaissance Capital. At the same time, at some point in time, Surikov was no longer allowed to work at all, and then he began receiving requests for absence from work. In addition, Surikov and Yaroslavtseva did not receive salaries for several months, as well as bonuses.
They were both subsequently fired for absenteeism, and Kayani and Smith resigned themselves. Surikov tried to achieve the truth in court, but lost. Forbes writes about this (archive link).
Those. Mikhasenko could lure top managers from key competitors, take advantage of their competencies to strengthen themselves in the market, and then simply deceive him by not paying the money supposedly due to them.
And if Mikhasenko has some kind of agreement with the beneficiaries of Renaissance Insurance, then won’t he do something similar with them, having acquired Renaissance Life?
It seems that acting not according to the rules, written or unwritten, is quite in the style of Mr. Mikhasenko. The surprising thing is that he created one of the leaders of the Russian financial market, without having the certificate necessary for such work.
In 2009, the Federal Service for Financial Markets (FSFM) canceled the qualification certificates of Mikhasenko and his deputy Anton Vetoshkin. It was announced that BCS violated the FSFM order prohibiting “short sales” and also did not comply with the rules of internal accounting and control. RBC writes about this.
Only in 2015 did he say that his certificate was returned to him. But he emphasized that he is now in such a position that he no longer needs any certificates.
His BCS bank is also surrounded by unpleasant events. He was mentioned in the context of a story with the alleged withdrawal of assets for the owners of Probusinessbank. In 2021, the creditor of the collapsed asset Wei M LLC filed three lawsuits against the bank in the Moscow Arbitration Court.
The co-defendant in the first case is the broker BrokerCreditService (Cyprus) Limited (BCS), in the second case - Sova Capital Limited (SCL) (both are part of the BCS group). In these two lawsuits against BCS and SCL, the plaintiff challenged transactions conducted on the day the bank's license was revoked. Securities worth 25 billion rubles were written off from the accounts of Probusinessbank as collateral.
For Boris Jordan, this is a serious reason to think about whether Mikhasenko will pull some kind of “feint” if Jordan does not have the funds to remove the deposit from Renaissance Life? In this case, Roman Abramovich will probably be happy to trip up his partner.
