Austrian chemical and fertilizer company Borealis has decided to reject the takeover offer from Russian billionaire Andrei Melnishenko. The wealthy Russian is 90 percent owner of the Russian fertilizer factory EuroChem and has been on the EU sanction list since last week. He has since withdrawn from the company.
Borealis, which is partly an Austrian state-owned company, announced that, even after protests from the farming community, it had decided to withdraw from the binding offer.
EuroChem offered EUR 455 million in February for Borealis' fertilizer activities. In doing so, the Russian would have secured production facilities in Austria, Germany and France, 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 has phosphate, potassium ore and nitrate mining facilities, fertilizer processing facilities, logistics and sales offices in Russia, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Lithuania, Germany, Belgium, Brazil, China and the United States. It operates with more than 27,000 employees in 100 countries.
The EU sanctions list also includes Russian billionaires Andrei Melnichenko, major shareholder of energy company SUEK, and Andrei Goeriev, the CEO of fertilizer producer PhosAgro. The chief executive of Russian airline Aeroflot, Mikhail Poluboyarinov, has also been hit by sanctions.
Dmitri Mazepin of Gazprom is also on the list. According to Brussels, these are prominent businesses that are active in important economic sectors. Earlier, the EU already put 26 oligarchs on the sanctions list.
Because that list also includes a large number of Russian parliamentarians, 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.