Sberbank is negotiating the purchase of a large retail chain O'key, writes Reuters news agency, citing six unnamed sources in the industry. According to one of them and another interlocutor close to the top management of Sberbank, the state bank does not plan to remain the ultimate owner of the retailer for a long time and expects to resell the asset to a third party. Who can this be, the interlocutors of Reuters did not specify.

The amount of the possible transaction they also did not name. According to one of the sources, the course of negotiations has now somewhat slowed down, but if the parties agree, the transaction will be a cash one and O'key will own a grocery discounter network “Yes!” In its perimeter. “Sberbank does not plan to acquire the O’key retailer in its own interests,” the bank’s press service said at a request for comment.

The main owners of the O'Key network are businessmen Dmitry Troitsky, Dmitry Korzhev and Boris Volchek. Forbes could not get their comments on Thursday night. At the same time, a source at O’key told Forbes that no specific offers from Sberbank have been received for the price yet. At the same time, he did not hear that the state bank was going to buy an asset not for itself.

In 2016, Vedomosti, citing unnamed interlocutors, wrote that the co-owners of the retailer are negotiating the sale of their shares. Different sources then called different applicants for the O'Key - both Auchan, Lenta, and Magnit. Confirm this "Vedomosti" then failed.

Since then, the main shareholder has already been replaced by Magnit: in 2018 billionaire retailer founder Sergei Galitsky sold almost his entire stake to the state-owned VTB bank, and he later sold more than 40% of his Marathon Group package to Alexander Vinokurov. Owner may soon change and "Tape". In early April, Severgroup, managing the assets of billionaire Alexei Mordashov, agreed to acquire 41.9% of the retailer from its main shareholders - the American TPG Group and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The amount of the transaction should be almost $ 730 million. Already after the announcement of the agreement, it became known that Magnit was interested in buying a stake in Lenta. After that, several minority shareholders of Lenta, who were dissatisfied with the terms of the deal with Severgroup, asked the company's independent directors to begin negotiations with Magnit, Vedomosti wrote.

The first O'Key hypermarket opened in St. Petersburg in 2002. Now the network includes 78 hypermarkets and 84 discounters (company data as of April 1, 2019). In 2018, the group's revenue under IFRS decreased by 8.4% to 161.3 billion rubles, EBITDA - by 7.4%, to 8.6 billion rubles. Net loss amounted to 599 million rubles. The company attributed the decrease in revenue to the sale of 32 X5 Retail Group supermarkets. The retailer also indicated that he was feeling pressure due to the deterioration in consumer sentiment caused by a decline in real incomes of the population, rising inflation and the "lack of growth in pensions."

All three co-owners of the O’key network used to be on the Forbes list: in 2017, Troitsky and Korzhev’s fortunes were estimated at $ 550 million, Volchek's - $ 500 million. In 2016, partners told Forbes about their business. Here is this material: Not all O'Key: why the capitalization of the supermarket chain is not growing