OREANDA-NEWS. January 15, 2007. In response to the information published by Dyelo on 15 January, 2008 at 08:00, SCM Finance represented by CEO Lajos Farkas declares: “Indeed, we are going to restructure the ownership structure of SCM’s insurance business, reported the press-centre of SCM.

So far, we are registering the company to be owned in full by SCM and incorporated in the structure of SCM-Finance Group. We expect to handover corporate rights of ASKA and ASKA-Life to this very company with observation of all current legal standards.

Under the current Law, shareholders of a private stock company enjoy a pre-emption right to purchase its shares if a shareholder decides to handover his holding to a third party. To observe all legal norms, the issuer sent a letter to all shareholders offering to take advantage of their pre-emption right.

The shareholding handover price was determined by SCM Finance in strict consistency with the current law on basis of comparable prices and is a market one. The shares of ASKA and ASKA-Life are not listed, so to fix their stock price, SCM Finance proceeded from results of similar public transactions in the area of insurance business acquisition in Russia and Ukraine. In particular, the auction results of the sale of 25% in Oranta Insurance carried out by State Property Fund of Ukraine in 2007 were taken into account. We believe that the declared shareholding price matches market position of ASKA. The registration process of the ad hoc SCM’s subsidiary and the handover of corporate rights of Group’s insurance companies are expected to be over by 1 March, 2008”.

On the part of SCM the situation was commented by Director of Business Development Ilya Arkhipov. He confirmed that finance business is strategic for SCM due to its huge potential for long-term growth.

Mr Arkhipov also said: “SCM is going to be a strategic investor of ASKA and ASKA-Life today and in future investing in their long-term development. SCM doesn’t plan to sell its insurance businesses to outsiders neither is it seeking buyers or negotiating the sale with third parties. On the contrary, the basis for further development of these companies within the Group is being created. To improve understanding and transparency of SCM’s business as well as establish the utmost effective ownership structure, the decision was made to found an ad hoc subsidiary and handover corporate rights of private stock companies ASKA and ASKA-Life owned by SCM Group to it”.