U.S. owner of major Russian agriculture firm says no plans to sell up

The main VTB Bank building, center, rises between skyscrapers of the 'Moscow City' in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, July 29, 2014. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

MOSCOW — U.S. company NCH Capital said on Friday that it has no plans to sell major Russian agricultural producer AgroTerra, after the head of Russia’s second-largest bank said it was in talks to buy the firm.

AgroTerra was placed under temporary state management by a decree from Russian President Vladimir Putin in April 2024.

Russian authorities have confiscated or placed under state management assets worth some $50 billion since the start of the war in Ukraine from Russian and foreign owners in the biggest redistribution of property since the privatization drive that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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On Tuesday Andrei Kostin, CEO of VTB, said the bank was in talks to buy AgroTerra, one of Russia’s top-20 agricultural landholders. He said the bank was already helping the state to manage its assets.

However, in a statement to Reuters, NCH said that NCH Agribusiness Partners, a private equity fund owned by a group of U.S. institutional investors and managed by New York-based NCH Capital, has “no plans to sell AgroTerra and is not in negotiations with any party regarding a possible sale.”

NCH’s reluctance to sell its Russian assets to VTB may affect the bank’s ambitions to build a national agriculture champion for Russia.

In an interview with Reuters this week, Kostin said VTB planned to create a large agricultural holding company from assets it has acquired. The bank bought previously nationalized agricultural assets in southern regions in December 2024.

AgroTerra operates in several central regions, cultivating 265,000 hectares and running 19 grain elevators with capacity to store up to 500,000 metric tons of grain. NCH said that NCH Agribusiness Partners created the company from scratch in 2008.

“Since April 2024, NCH Agribusiness Partners has not had access to information regarding the operations of AgroTerra, nor has it been involved in any decision-making concerning its activities,” NCH said.

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“Prior to the imposition of temporary administration, AgroTerra was operating successfully and in full compliance with applicable laws with no intention to exit the market,” it added.

VTB is under U.S. sanctions and has hundreds of millions of dollars in assets frozen in the West as a result.

Kostin said the new holding company, whose creation could take up to five years, would focus on domestic processing of grains and other products and suggested it might be sold later.

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Writing by Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Toby Chopra