The Austrian chemical and fertilizer company Borealis has decided to reject the takeover bid from Russian billionaire Andrei Melnichenko. The extremely wealthy Russian owns 90 percent of the Russian fertilizer company EuroChem and has been on the EU sanctions list since last week. He is said to have since withdrawn from the company.
Borealis, which is partly an Austrian state-owned enterprise, announced that it had decided to withdraw from the binding offer despite protests from the agricultural community.
In February, EuroChem offered 455 million euros for Borealis’s fertilizer operations. This would have secured production facilities in Austria, Germany, and France for the Russian, as well as a sales and distribution network.
EuroChem is one of the five largest fertilizer producers in the world with a turnover of 5.48 billion euros. It operates phosphate, potash ore, and nitrate mining facilities, fertilizer processing plants, logistics, and sales offices in Russia, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Lithuania, Germany, Belgium, Brazil, China, and the United States. It employs more than 27,000 people in 100 countries.
The EU sanctions list also includes Russian billionaires Andrei Melnichenko, a major shareholder of the energy company SUEK, and Andrei Guriev, the CEO of the fertilizer producer PhosAgro. The head of the Russian airline Aeroflot, Mikhail Poluboyarinov, has also been targeted by sanctions.
Dmitry Mazepin of Gazprom is also on the list. According to Brussels, these are prominent businessmen active in key economic sectors. Earlier, the EU had already placed 26 oligarchs on the sanctions list.
Since a large number of Russian parliamentarians are also on the list, a total of 862 Russians are now directly affected by European sanctions. They can no longer carry out financial transactions and all their assets are frozen.