The Tatarstan IT market is preparing a "deal of the year": FAS allowed Rostec's daughter company to buy out 100% of Bars Group

The National Center for Informatization ( NCI ) filed an application with the Federal Antimonopoly Service for the purchase of the Kazan integrator Bars Group . FAS Russia agreed. NCI is a subsidiary of Rostec.

The first rumors about NCI’s interest in the Kazan company appeared in early February 2016. "Daughter" "Rostec" claims to be 100% stake in Bars Group.

The owners of Bars Group will be able to get 2-3 billion rubles for their company, Dmitry Komissarov, the head of New Cloud Technologies , estimates. Others interviewed by CNews heads of domestic IT companies converge to the sum of 2 billion rubles.
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Some market participants call the acquisition of Bars Group NCI “non-market history”, suggesting that as a result of a number of takeovers of IT assets, NCI will turn into a “superintegrator” interesting for another major government player to buy.

The publication “Real Time” designated the future takeover as “the deal of the year in the Tatarstan IT-market”. Efim Klimov, CEO of software developer "Etton" , in an interview with the correspondent of "Real Time" commented on the situation:

Bars Group is engaged in projects to automate the public sector, there are a number of industries where automation is required. Regional informatization is now in a recession, regional budgets for informatization are declining, so now everything is not very bright in this part of the market. With this in the first place I associate the sale of the company NCI.

You said that IT-specialists estimated the value of the company at 2 billion - my opinion, this cost is overvalued. Now the market is squeezing, and for the management of the Bars Group it is a great happiness to be in time to sell it. When most of the gross revenues are tied to the state regional segment, and we know this, non-systemic sales - it is built on certain possibilities of lobbyism, on integration things. I would definitely estimate a digit much less than one billion, because this company under current conditions, in the absence of a strategic investor, according to my forecasts, would have suffered losses this year.

Given that in the next 5-10 years, the policy of import substitution will continue, there will be no relief for foreign developers. Naturally, everyone will buy domestic products. And Rostec is a huge company with hundreds of different departments and subsidiaries. They all will need to buy software. They gain these competencies now with the expectation that they will need them in the future.

In terms of long-term strategy, this is probably correct. The question is different - Bars Group does not have these competencies. Here is the main paradox of this situation.

According to SPARK-Interfax, in 2014, the company's revenue amounted to 917 million rubles, net profit - 9.3 million. The number of employees at the end of 2014 was 900 people. The CEO of Bars Group is Timur Akhmerov, who is also its sole owner.

NCI was established in April 2014 to develop electronic services and services for the public sector. In August 2015, the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service granted the petition of Rostelecom to acquire 50% of the company, but for the time being Rostec remains its sole owner. After the change of leadership in December last year, the company announced that, in addition to developing IT services, it would also develop software for import substitution, major integration projects in government agencies.