"With Magna pledging to keep all four German Opel factories open, it appears that Merkel has found the positive solution she was looking for - although some may find it almost as complex as the problem it tries to solve. The agreement includes a 1.5-billion-euro ($2.1-billion) bridge loan from the German government aimed at preventing Opel itself from going bust before Magna can make its financing available.
Magna's bid, meanwhile, is to be bankrolled by Russia's state-owned Russian Sberbank, which will consequently gain a 35-percent stake in Opel. And Berlin will provide 4.5 billion euros in loan guarantees for Magna and Sberbank. All of this is meant to help Opel gain autonomy from its beleaguered parent company GM."
As Sberbank states:
"Sberbank today is the largest credit institution in Russia and CIS, accounting for about a quarter of the aggregate Russian banking assets and a third of banking capital. According to The Banker magazine, as of July 1, 2008, Sberbank was ranked 33rd in the world in terms of Tier 1 capital.
Established in 1841, Sberbank has grown into a universal commercial bank with diversified business. Sberbank is the biggest taker of deposits in the country and the key lender to the national economy. As of 1 February 2009, Sberbank accounted for more than 50% of retail deposits and had a 30% share in Russian loan market"
The Moscow Times has reported that Sberbank, with close cooperation with Putin, has been aggressively buying up assets in Russia and elsewhere, and recently:
The Komsomolsk-on-Amur-based plant, which builds nuclear submarines but found itself on the verge of bankruptcy, will be transferred to the United Shipbuilding Corporation, or USC, the government-controlled holding in which the state is consolidating the country's shipbuilding industry, Putin said.
The plant, which employs 15,000 people, has accumulated a debt of 36 billion rubles ($1.1 billion), including 13.6 billion rubles ($420 million) to state-owned Sberbank, Putin said during a visit to the plant, according to a transcript of his meeting with the plant's workers posted on the government's web site.
"The day before yesterday, Sberbank and a group of private shareholders signed an agreement to sell a 59 percent stake to Sberbank," Putin said, adding that Sberbank would sell the stake to USC, which is 100 percent owned by the state."
It should be interesting to see what conflicts will arise out of this deal. The German and Russian interests are conflicted from the outset.
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