MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian court eased restrictions imposed on UniCredit in a lawsuit over an aborted gas project, on Friday allowing the Italian lender to offer Russian sovereign bonds as collateral in lieu of other assets and property.
The St. Petersburg arbitration court ruled in mid-May that 462.7 million euros ($503 million) worth of securities, real estate and accounts belonging to UniCredit, as well as 100% of the shares in UniCredit Leasing and UniCredit Garant, would be seized .
UniCredit Leasing and UniCredit Garant are subsidiaries of AO UniCredit Bank, the Russian arm of the Italian group. UniCredit said in early May that the seizure affected only a fraction of the Russian unit’s assets, not the entire subsidiary.
Following the asset seizure, UniCredit’s Russian unit agreed with the plaintiff, RusChemAlliance, for UniCredit to pledge Russian OFZ treasury bonds with a market value of around 50 billion rubles ($556 million), the court said .
UniCredit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This is considered proportionate to the claim…taking into account that the price of securities undergoes periodic changes depending on the influence of various external market factors,” the court said.
The OFZ pledge agreement softens the terms of the existing restrictions while maintaining the possibility of enforcing the court’s decision in the future, the court said.
The Italian bank was one of the guarantor creditors of a contract for the construction of a gas processing plant in Russia with Germany’s Linde, which was terminated due to Western sanctions.
When the project was halted, St. Petersburg-based RusChemAlliance, a joint venture that is 50% owned by Russian gas giant Gazprom, made a €2 billion advance on the €10 billion contract, according to the website of the British Supreme Court.
UniCredit issued part of the guarantee package in favor of RusChem on behalf of Linde.
($1 = 0.9191 euros)
($1 = 89.9130 rubles)
(Reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya and Alexander Marrow; Editing by Mark Potter)
