Anti-Trust Service officials are now considering the request, but it is yet unclear when they will respond to it.
In the meantime, Silovye Mashiny has started merger procedure with the engineering group Obyedinennye Mashinostroitelnye Zavody, or OMZ. Shareholders have filed applications for the exchange of a 60 percent stake in Silovye Mashiny for OMZ stocks, an OMZ spokesperson told RIA Novosti.
"Today [July 13] is the deadline for filing exchange applications, meaning that the merger process is getting underway, which will lead up to OMZ's acquisition of a controlling stake in Silovye Mashiny," the spokesperson said.
The companies announced their intention to merge back in December 2003. The deal was supposed to bring a 50 percent stake in OMZ to Silovye Mashiny shareholders while OMZ was to get all the 100 percent of Silovye Mashiny's stocks. In reply to a RIA correspondent's question as to why Silovye Masiny shareholders had failed to transfer all of their stocks to OMZ shareholders, the OMZ spokesperson said they had acted as they had seen fit.
Analysts approached by RIA are divided on Siemens' plans to purchase a controlling stake in Silovye Mashiny.
"I believe that the deal will fail to be struck owing to the political element there is to it, with Silovye Mashiny involved in strategic production," argues Alexander Razuvayev, a leading analyst with Megatrustoil. In his view, the chance of Siemens clinching such a deal is negligible and the merger between Silovye Mashiny and OMZ is much more likely.
The market has put quite a high price on Silovye Mashiny, so it even surpasses Siemens on major financial evaluation quotients,Razuvayev says.
His counterpart at the Renaissance Capital group, Semyon Mironov, does not agree. The German multinational will manage to buy the controlling stake in question, he predicts. "I think Siemens will be allowed to buy Silovye Mashiny. If we try to assess [the likelihood] of the planned deal in percentage points, we will get a 60%-to-40% ratio. But there's no point in making forecasts at this point, as this will be tantamount to reading coffee grounds," Mironov pointed out.
Denis Nushtayev, an expert with the investment company Metropole, doubts that Siemens will be able to take over the Russian industrial giant. "In all probability, the government will not approve the deal. We should not lose sight of the fact that Silovye Mashiny is a key manufacturer of hardware for the military industrial complex and a powerful player on the Russian market," Nushtayev said, adding that the government would most likely keep Silovye to itself.
Analyst Vyacheslav Zhabin, of Brokercreditservice, told RIA that he expected the controlling stake in Silovye to be sold off abroad.
"In Russia, there are restrictions on the presence of foreigners in the capital structure of Russian companies, but I don't think that Silovye fall under these restrictions," he pointed out.
Silovye Mashiny is a leading Russian manufacturer and supplier of equipment for hydraulic, thermal, gas and nuclear power plants, for the transmission and distribution of electricity, and for transportation networks. It incorporates the St. Petersburg-based LMZ steel works, the energy equipment designer Elektrosila, the Kaluga turbine plant, the turbine blades maker ZTL, and the Energomashexport company, involved with rocket engines.
