Danone plans to sell Russian businesses – media

The French company Danone intends to sell its Russian business. The buyer may be one of the members of the Kremlin leadership, related to the nephew of the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. It was reported by the Financial Times.

According to the publication, the dairy products group wants to sell the Life&Nutrition rebranding to Russian dairy company Vamin Tatarstan, owned by 29-year-old Mintimer Mingazov.

Mingazov was appointed to Life&Nutrition’s board of directors last summer, shortly after the Kremlin handed control of the business to Yakub Zakriev, Kadyrov’s 33-year-old nephew, in retaliation for Western sanctions imposed as response to the attack on Ukraine.

In a letter sent to Russian Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev, Airat Mukhamadeev, director of the new company owned by Vamin Tatarstan, said the company agreed to pay $191.5 million for control of Danone’s business in Russia .

As is known, the French group is considering the possibility of selling Vamin.

Danone has written off more than 700 million euros since the divestment, and also wrote down an additional 500 million euros in July of last year due to the collapse of the ruble.

Following Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine, Danone initially said it planned to stay in the country, but announced in October 2022 that it would seek a buyer in a deal that could result in a write-down of up to €1 billion.

Let’s recall that the Russian structure of Siemens AG LLC Systems (formerly Siemens LLC) plans to initiate a voluntary liquidation procedure in February 2024.

German business application provider SAP has also reportedly warned that from March 20 it will close access to cloud services to clients from Russia.