OREANDA-NEWS. Smart Holding and SCM have finalised a legal process determining the distribution of their ownership interests in HarvEast as part of their efforts to improve corporate governance.

In line with previous agreements, SCM Group owns 75% and Smart Holding owns 25% of the authorised stock of HarvEast after all formalities have been completed.

“Agricultural business is of strategic priority for Smart Holding. We believe in Ukraine’s agricultural potential and are committed to embarking on the most ambitious initiatives with our partner, SCM Group,” says Kan Hyunchan, Smart Holding’s Business Controlling and Strategy Director.

“Joint actions to develop agricultural business will help SCM and Smart Holding to use their management capabilities in this area more efficiently. We are confident that our efforts will drive further development of HarvEast,” Sergey Zuzak, SCM’s Director of Agricultural Business Development, commented on the deal closure.

“Moreover, we are confident that cooperation of SCM and Smart Holding in agricultural area will have a positive impact of the industry’s performance in Ukraine,” he went on to say.

The HarvEast development strategy approved by the shareholders envisages an increase of the land bank to 500,000 hectares. Other investment areas include: purchase of new machinery, R&D and employee development.

Both Smart Holding and SCM realize how important it is to develop regions where their agricultural assets are based and have spent more than US 2 billion in HarvEast’s social projects over the past year alone.

Smart Holding is one of the largest investment groups in Ukraine with focus on key industries of the economy, including metals & mining, oil & gas, banking area, agriculture, retail, shipbuilding and real estate. Smart Holding participates in other projects as a portfolio investor.

System Capital Management (SCM) is a professional investor, the managing company of the biggest Ukrainian financial and industrial group focusing on three business areas: mining and metals, energy and finance. The company also operates in other sectors including telecommunications, media, real estate, grocery retail, clay production, petroleum products retail, agriculture, heavy engineering and transportation.

SCM Group includes Metinvest Holding, DTEK, First Ukrainian International Bank, Renaissance Capital Bank, ASKA and ASKA-Life insurance companies, Vega Telecommunications Group, Ukraina Media Group, ESTA Holding (real estate), Ukrainskiy Retail (grocery retail), UMG (clay production), Parallel (petroleum products retail), HarvEast (agriculture), Mining Machines holding, Portinvest transportation holding and others.