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06.04.2017
2017
Ukrainian businessman Oleksandr Yaroslavsky has acquired the insurance company Ingo Ukraine. Three independent sources reported this to NV Business.
According to the manager of one of the companies cooperating with Ingo, employees of the insurance company report that the purchase and sale agreement was closed last week.
Chairman of the Board of Ingo Ukraine Ihor Gordienko refused to confirm the information, citing corporate rules, although he did not deny the fact of the change of owner. “We are preparing public information [press release], we will provide it on this matter in one or two weeks. I cannot add anything more,” he said.
Yaroslavsky himself did not answer calls. The press service of his financial and industrial group DCH did not have time to prepare a response to the request by the time the article was published.
Until July 2015, the insurance company Ingo Ukraine, together with Ingo Ukraine Life, were part of the structure of the Russian company Invest-Polis (owned by SK Ingosstrakh in Russia). Later, the financial institutions were transferred to a group of legal entities registered in Cyprus. The ultimate beneficiary or controller is not known.
Russians felt good in the Ukrainian insurance market. Ingo flourished in the segment of auto insurance, health insurance, protection of water transport risks, and civil aviation. Russians invested about 7 million hryvnias in their own medical center. So, six months before the sale, they announced that they had no intention of leaving.
The change of ownership occurred after new requirements of Ukrainian legislation, according to which Ukrainian financial regulators can revoke licenses of companies owned by an aggressor country. None of Ingo's Cypriot shareholders has a significant stake in the company's capital, so they did not undertake to disclose their data.
That is why Ukrainian experts then called the change of Russian registration to Cypriot registration an exclusively technical sale. And so far, the direct owners of Ingo may remain Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska and the Italian insurer Generali (which owns 38.5% of Ingosstrakh).
At the end of last year, rumors appeared in the financial sector that Yaroslavsky decided to return to the financial market. Until 2010, he owned UkrSibbank, which he later sold to the French group BNP Paribas, and the insurance company Ukrainian Insurance Alliance (USA), which was sold to the French AXA Group.
At first, the Russian publication Kommersant wrote that Yaroslavsky was interested in buying a Russian asset in Ukraine - Sberbank. However, the deal fell through. Now, as an advisor to the chairman of the board of one of the insurance companies says on condition of anonymity, information has emerged that the Russians have agreed with Yaroslavsky on a "mutual exchange" of other assets in order to reduce the risks of doing business in warring countries.
So, such activity by the Ukrainian businessman Yaroslavsky, as the head of the insurance commission of the Ukrainian Society of Financial Analysts Vyacheslav Chernyakhovsky says, once again confirms the idea that he really intends to acquire a bank and an insurance company, repeating his success with Ukrsib.
The official DCH page even has a separate Finance section, which remains empty for now.
The Russians could have given up on the Ukrainian asset, because the business needs to be developed, and making new investments is too risky.
“Otherwise, additional investments for development may really be needed. Because in the corporate sector, in which they specialize, there is currently a lot of competition, they are being squeezed, and Ingo has not offered anything new in recent years,” says Asya Trubitskaya, Deputy General Director of Talisman Insurance Company. In such conditions, when the shareholder does not provide funds for development, and competition is growing, the company will not be able to hold on to its profits for a long time.
The insurance market experts interviewed by NV Business do not undertake to estimate the possible value for which Yaroslavsky acquired Ingo. The company does not disclose a clear structure of assets, explains Chernyakhovsky. The terms of the deal are also not fully known, and the situation on the market in Ukraine is currently too uncertain to name market prices.
However, in general, Ingo as an asset is a fairly good acquisition, NV Business interlocutors are sure. “They have good IT support, they have a clear accounting system, they have well-established sales, the company as a whole is systemic,” Trubitska assesses. The company’s medical insurance program is a special asset.
In addition, Ingo has a good brand and reputation, it is one of the companies that pays for insurance cases, meets standards and remains solvent. So they can quite possibly keep the name.
“On the other hand, the company has growth at the inflation rate. That is, it is a large established team that has exhausted its growth. So it is quite possible that Yaroslavsky will want to bring a new company with him,” says Chernyakhovsky. For example, the same Oleksandr Melnyk, with whom he worked at the USA.
Source: NV Business
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