Privat and Transmashholding Register for LTPL Tender

The State Property Fund yesterday announced the names of the four bidders for a 76% stake in Luhanskteplovoz (LTPL: HOLD) in the privatization auction scheduled for October 3. They include two companies controlled by Ukraine’s Privat group – Marganets Ore and Dniprovagonmash (the latter jointly with the TAS group), and two companies controlled by Russia’s Transmashholding: the Demykhovsk and Bryansk machine building plants. Also, the Cabinet is scheduled to decide today whether to cancel the tender. Olha Pankiv:  Only two real bidders, after Germany’s Siemens, Poland’s Kolej Baltycka and two Ukrainian groups which took part in earlier stages of the tender decided not to place bids, probably because of uncertainty over whether the auction would be completed and the recent Higher Administrative Court ruling ordering the SPF to sell the stake in LTPL to AvtoKrAZ based on a 2001 tender. Thus, any potential winner of the new tender condemns itself to legal battles with AvtoKrAZ. We think the Cabinet is likely to postpone the tender.