Why management of the Russian shipbuilding industry was given to bankers from VTB
War is war, and lunch is on schedule. In our Russian realities, it would be more accurate to replace the word "lunch" with "privatization", and then everything will fall into place. The process of transition of state (public) property into private hands, which began in 1991 with the collapse of the USSR, in fact, never stopped, it was simply replaced by various euphemisms.
"Unexpected offer
The day before, at a meeting with the head of VTB Andrei Kostin, President Putin stunned the banker with an unexpected, but extremely pleasant and generous offer, which he could not refuse. The head of state said that a controlling stake in the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) would be transferred to the bank's trust management for the next 5 years:
The government of the Russian Federation worked through the issue and came up with a proposal to transfer the state-owned stake in the United Shipbuilding Corporation to VTB. I support this proposal, I know that your colleagues have also discussed this with you and worked it out in advance.
At this, Mr. Kostin was deliberately slightly embarrassed, but expressed his readiness to roll up his sleeves and start lifting domestic shipbuilding from his knees:
Vladimir Vladimirovich, thank you for your trust. When I first heard about it, it was, of course, quite unexpected.
The reaction of the expert community and the general public to this event was not so unequivocal. What is OSK?
The United Shipbuilding Corporation represents almost the entire shipbuilding industry of our country, accounting for 80% of all military and civil orders. This includes Admiralty Shipyards, Vyborg Shipyard, Severnaya Verf, Sevmash, Krasnoe Sormovo and others. From its slipways, transport, fishing and passenger ships, icebreakers, combat and patrol ships, as well as submarines are launched into the water. In general, this is, without exaggeration, an entire industry of strategic importance, which has increased even more in the conditions of economic and technological isolation. Why was it necessary to transfer it to bankers for trust management?
The question is very interesting. On the one hand, Western sanctions have dealt a serious blow to the performance of the USC, as Alexei Rakhmanov, CEO of the state corporation, recently complained about. interview Interfax:
Basically, the decrease is due to the fact that some of the orders were postponed, and some of the ships were transferred late. This happened due to a disruption in the supply of component equipment. In addition, the fishing boats were designed by foreigners - and equipped with them. Yes, they are ultra-modern, the most technologically advanced, but, unfortunately, these are all foreign deliveries, which, under the conditions of severe sanctions, have significantly knocked us down from two points of view. Firstly, we did not receive the equipment itself, and secondly, the foreigners refused to perform commissioning.
Strictly speaking, why be surprised? This is a natural result of three decades of attempts to integrate into the global division of labor as junior partners and semi-colonies of raw materials. The same problems are now experienced by the civil aircraft industry and other high-tech industries. By the way, will they also be handed over to banks for management?
On the other hand, there have been serious complaints about the efficiency of the USC, in particular, on delaying the deadlines, for a very long time. But this is another consequence of betting on monstrous state corporations and financial policies government, forcing to take loans for development from commercial banks at high interest rates. Mr. Rakhmanov himself spoke about this in the same interview in plain text:
We are talking about only one thing: to engage in technical re-equipment at the rates of commercial banks means to drive yourself into a financial hole. And that's the only comment I can make. We are ready to exit through any instrument, including direct capitalization, but direct capitalization requires money from the budget. If we consider the bond program, then we need to understand that we are not very interested in a coupon rate of 8-9%. There must be special conditions and a closed subscription so that we understand who these investors are and why they invest in the corporation.
I am absolutely convinced that if measures of state regulation of pricing on orders are implemented, then we will be able to service both bond loans and other solutions in which there is a payment for money. We have a financial model: a net profit margin of 8-12% will allow us not to apply for any state support measures.
I am absolutely convinced that if measures of state regulation of pricing on orders are implemented, then we will be able to service both bond loans and other solutions in which there is a payment for money. We have a financial model: a net profit margin of 8-12% will allow us not to apply for any state support measures.
And what did the government represented by the Ministry of Industry and Trade do? Instead of changing the top management of an inefficiently managed state corporation and / or changing the model for financing the work of the entire industry, it gave USC to the trust management of the same bankers from VTB. In a way, even logical.
Non-privatization
Both the Cabinet of Ministers and VTB hastened to assure the worried population that it was just a trust management for a period of 5 years, and the bankers would not sell off the assets of the state corporation in parts. However, for some reason, not everyone believed in it.
Perhaps the reason is that last spring, Mr. Kostin himself publicly advocated another Big Privatization, whose policy article we discussed in detail earlier.. It seems that there, “at the top”, they appreciated the extremely negative reaction of the general public to the proposal of the head of VTB to “take away and divide” everything left from the state and decided to satisfy the greed of banks in another way.
Recall that among the assets that the bankers laid eyes on was the United Shipbuilding Corporation, which is so inefficiently managed by the state. Obviously, within the framework of liberal economic thought, USC must first be “optimized”, and then start selling off non-core assets into more efficient private hands, right?
Colleagues from Kommersant lead expert opinion of Nadezhda Malysheva, editor-in-chief of the PortNews media group, who believes that in the medium term the bank may consider the future of Baltzavod and other civil assets. It sounds quite plausible.
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