Russia’s largest silver deposits, located in Siberia and the Far East, could come under Chinese control.
Chinese investors are interested in buying the Russian assets of Polymetal, the country’s largest silver mine, Vitaly Nesis, CEO of the company, told the Financial Times.
Polymetal, which owns enterprises in the Magadan and Sverdlovsk regions, as well as Khabarovsk Krai, Yakutia and Chukotka, switched its headquarters to Kazakhstan in August and announced plans to completely divest from Russian operations. We’re talking about eight mines that supply three quarters of the company’s annual production.
Chinese buyers are also bidding on these assets, Nesis said, without naming specific companies. He added that the deal would “inevitably” have a discount, although it would not be “catastrophic”. – I believe that Polymetal will be able to benefit significantly from the sale – he emphasized.
Polymetal plans to invest the money from the sale in Kazakhstan companies, which provided half of the company’s net income and all of its cash flows last year.
Who wants to take over Polymetal’s assets?
The transaction requires the approval of the Russian government, but Nesis believes Moscow authorities will not decide to nationalize Polymetal’s assets, as they did in the case of Carlsberg and Danone.
In addition to Chinese investors, Russian companies are also competing for Polymetal’s assets. Among them is the largest gold mine, Polius, which before the war belonged to the family of a senator from Dagestan, Suleiman Kerimov.
According to the sources of the newspaper “Kommersant”, each of the applicants would first of all like to acquire a “best chunk”, and not the entire Polymetal business.
May 19 The US Treasury Department has sanctioned Polymetal’s Russian structures in connection with Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Source: Do Rzeczy
Roy Brown is a renowned economist and author at The Nation View. He has a deep understanding of the global economy and its intricacies. He writes about a wide range of economic topics, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, international trade, and labor markets.
