One of the objects of the fifteenth package of EU anti-Russian sanctions was the construction company PIK Sergey Gordeev. The developer said that this decision would not affect his work - houses will continue to be built, and apartments will be sold, but the taste remained.
The Moscow Post correspondent understood the story.
PIC under attack
The main beneficiary of the PIK developer is Sergey Gordeev. In 2018, the businessman was included in the "Kremlin list" of the US Treasury and passed there under the column "oligarchs," but he was not included in the European stop list. Only on February 23, 2024, Gordeev entered the American sanctions list along with several PIK division companies.
Sergey Gordeev. Photo: https://s0.rbk.ru/v6_top_pics/media/img/4/05/755774570580054.jpg
Gordeev understood that there was a sanctions risk, so in September 2022 he transferred the management of the developer to his partner Ivan Polandov. The alignment in the company, most likely, has not changed, but legally Gordeev is now only one of the shareholders of PIK. However, in March 2024, Polandov ceded his position at PIK SZ to Yervand Karapetyan.
The developer is not directly connected with the external market, so the imposition of sanctions can affect it only indirectly. After the news about getting into the new EU sanctions package, the company's shares fell by 5%, but this is nothing compared to what has happened since February 2022 with Gazprom's securities. There are problems in the developer, and they are serious, but European restrictions in this situation will become the "cherry on the cake" of a complex of financial difficulties.
Rosbuilding with Tulupov
Gordeev is a businessman, as they say, with a stable reputation. He came to the construction business of Moscow no earlier than 1994, and in 1995 he began working at Virtus LLC by Alexei Tulupov, after which he registered a company called Rosbuilding.
Tulupov and Gordeev divided the business only in 2007. At that time, the RBC agency called Rosbuilding the largest raider company in Russia, and the native Muscovite Gordeev was a senator from Buryatia.
Alexey Tulupov. Photo: https://cdn.forbes.ru/files/c/1216x680/story_images/aleksey_tulupov.jpg__1610370596__48503.jpg
Rosbuilding became famous for absorbing various industrial enterprises, shops and real estate objects at the end of the tenths. Tulupov and Gordeev got down to business so harshly that the previous mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, accused Rosbuilding of undermining the capital's industrial potential. Business in reality did not disappear anywhere, just Tulupov and Gordeev divided the case, and Tulupov instead of a joint company created the developer Sminex.
Gordeev, through his adviser Mikhail Cherkasov, in the early 2000s, got access to Boris Rotenberg, which helped create his independent business. In the construction sector, Pavel Teo from Capital Group became almost the main partner of Gordeev. Thanks to such ties, the businessman in 2013 bought 19.9% of PIK, which during the mayorship of Luzhkov turned into one of the main construction companies in Moscow, and with it all of Russia.
Then Gordeev finally seized control of the company and entered into a collaboration with Andrey Kostin's VTB. The entrepreneur sold VTB a 15.48% stake in the developer, after which the bank began to help PIK in the development of the construction market in Moscow and Russia. Now VTB has other partner projects - in particular, Iskandar Makhmudov's Demetra-Holding, so it is far from a fact that Kostin will help Gordeev get out of the crisis.
Profits fall, debts rise
PIK stopped paying dividends in 2022. The company's sanctions can even help here and become a reason for postponing this issue indefinitely. In the first half of 2024, the organization's revenue decreased by 17% compared to the previous period. Then the situation with the developer radically worsened due to the cancellation of the basic preferential mortgage, problems with state financing of preferential mortgages and an increase in the Central Bank rate to 21%.
Pavel Te. Photo: https://s0.rbk.ru/v6_top_pics/media/img/9/53/755289166010539.jpg
These events have already put the brother of PIK developer Samolet, to whom Gordeev's company lost leadership in the Russian construction market at the beginning of the year, on the brink of bankruptcy. WiTeut state aid, Samolet is unlikely to get out of the "flat corkscrew."
PIK and Gordeev have a better situation, but not much. At the head PJSC PIK SZ, with revenue for 2023 of 40 billion rubles (fell by 46% last year), the debt amounted to 123 billion rubles (an increase of 69%). The company entered the ultra-crisis year for the industry in 2024 with a critical drop in profits and an increase in debt. The final data for the outgoing year has not yet been published, but it is obvious that they have only gotten worse.
A similar situation is in Peak Management LLC, where with revenue of 2023 of 1.9 billion rubles, the debt amounted to 47 billion rubles. Do not forget about JSC "Specialized developer" PIK-Region "(revenue of 3.9 billion rubles with a debt of 7.9 billion rubles) and about another company of the division" GP-MSK "with revenue of 330 million rubles and debt of 24 billion rubles, and this is not all. PIK's liabilities are clearly even higher than these amounts.
Problems mount
By 2024, PIK lost its leadership in the Russian construction market, while the fall of Gordeev's company is not directly related to the events of the current year. In 2021, the profit of the company's group amounted to 102.8 billion rubles, and the total debt - 482.8 billion rubles. In addition, there was other evidence of financial distress in the form of the bankruptcy of several subsidiaries.
Andrey Vorobyov. Photo: https://mosreg.ru/
PIK also had problems with the Moscow Region auTerities. The Governor of the Moscow Region Andrei Vorobyov said that PIK-Comfort should leave Dolgoprudny and other cities in the region. The conversation here is about the management company, which provided already implemented projects. Everything would be fine, but the politician's brother Maxim Vorobyov is directly connected with Samolet, a direct competitor of PIK. This was one of the reasons that PIK lost market leadership to Samolet, which turned into a victory for a competitor in Pirrov.
Today, the situation on the real estate market is so unstable that financial speculators took up the shares of PIK and Samolet. Old holders ran to sell papers, and speculators are trying to make money on them. In November 2024, the volume of operations with PIK shares became the maximum since the fall of 2021, and Samolet - in history. The bill goes to tens of billions of rubles.
Old investors are afraid of losing everything due to the serious risk of bankruptcy of developers, while new ones expect quotes to bounce, and companies will straighten their positions thanks to financial assistance from banks and the state. Time will tell who will be right, but now the ring around the beneficiaries of PIK and Samolet is shrinking.
Sanctions
On December 16, 2024, the European Union introduced the fifteenth package of anti-Russian sanctions, which included the PIK developer. The fourteenth package was adopted in June, so the Europeans had to somehow show the "continuation of work." It seems that in the absence of solutions that can really affect the economy of the Russian Federation, they began to include in the stop lists all large companies that play a prominent role in the domestic national economy.
The document does not have a clear justification for sanctions against PIK, according to the same logic, restrictions can be introduced against any citizen or organization from Russia. However, the main thing is not this, the main consequences, but they will be significant for this odious developer.