Dozens of cable operators and internet service providers received an identical letter this month with a chilling, unwelcome and unexpected offer.
“We propose you to consider selling your company. The proposal is valid though Sept. 21, 2013,” the letter read. The short text was followed by a phone number and signed by Serhiy Nahorniy. No job title. No details.
Andriy Semydidko, head of the Anti-Raider Union of Entrepreneurs, a business organization that specializes in fighting hostile takeovers, says the letter looks suspiciously like a typical pressure tactic before a takeover.
“First, there is a mailing of proposals, then there is an ostentatious reduction of the value, and every day the business will become cheaper. This is creation of conditions, when everyone who has business, will in the end come forward to surrender,” Semydidko says.
Nahorniy, the author of the letter, denies attempts at raidership. “I’m not a raider… I write letters with proposals to them. Raiders come when you do not expect,” he says.
He says he wrote 90 letters to telecom companies in Donetsk and Luhansk because he really would like to buy. “I intend to build a big company with about 100-200,000 consumers for me, not for any firm,” he said.
He says he has already bought 12 companies, but refuses to talk about the details. He sees nothing strange about his letter. “We just want to understand who will sell and who won’t,” he says.
Others, however, see plenty of strange things about his letter.
The letterhead on it features the company name PII TOV Evro Finance Ltd. There is only one such company registered by the authorities, according to the official company register. This is a holding that unites 22 businesses, many involved in the trade of scrap metal. It also recently got state guarantees for a credit line worth Hr 1.35 billion, prompting a wave of speculation about the business’s closeness to the government.
The company has also been in the news because of controversy around its plans to build a steel mill in Bila Tserkva, a town in Kyiv region. Earlier this year, Forbes Ukraine wrote that the company was bought by the controversial Ukrainian businessman Yuriy Ivaniushchenko, a close ally of the president and no stranger to raiderscandals. He denied owning the firm, however.
But Nahorniy, who in his letter claims to represent this company, does not actually work there, according to the assistant to the company’s chief executive officer. “He doesn`t work for us and our company never works with him,” the assistant said. She refused to give her name.
When confronted about his affiliation with the holding, Nahorniy said he works for another company with a nearly identical name. “Almost the same, but with changes… in English letters.” His description contradicts the law, however, because companies can only be registered with Ukrainian letters in the name.
If this confusion with names was not enough, there is another one. Serhiy Nahorniy, a man with the same name, featured in a 2008 raider scandal in Donetsk when a factory was taken over. The Nahorniy who allegedly represents PII TOV Evro Finance Ltd denies any relation, though.
Semydidko of the Anti-Raider Union of Entrepreneurs is not buying it. He advises companies that received the letter to be prepared for hostile takeovers.
“Businesses have to be ready, have good lawyers, be public, not be afraid to talk about it,” he says. “It’s very clear that this is the hand of a confident firm that has cheap money and is buying up the market. The first stage is to switch the lamp on. And then you force the flies to fly to it.”
Read also: Triple trouble for top firms, Takeover at Globus mall.
Kyiv Post staff writer Anna Babinets can be reached at [email protected]
