Contrary to Vladimir Putin's wishes, this company will not emerge by late 2006, experts warned.
The Russian Industry and Energy Ministry's concept calls for merging the biggest private and state-run aircraft companies - Sukhoi, Irkut, MiG, Ilyushin and Tupolev - into the consolidated aircraft company. The state will own a 60-70% stake in the new legal entity. The consolidated aircraft company will feature military, civilian and transport sub-holdings.
The merger mechanism has not yet been launched. The Kremlin has returned Industry and Energy Ministry's draft of a presidential decree for further work. Federal Industry Agency officials started rewriting this decree in late May, but an agency source could not say when the work would be completed "Various aircraft-industry officials and businessmen still cannot decide who is more important, and whose protege will head the new company," a manager from a state-run aircraft-industry company explained.
"The merger should now be in full swing. However, this process has become entangled in red tapes, so, it will be impossible to establish the company by the end of 2006," Yelena Sakhnova, an analyst with the OFG investment company, said.
"The government has virtually stopped managing the military-industrial sector and the aircraft industry in the last few months," Konstantin Makiyenko, an expert with the Center for Analyzing Strategies and Technologies, said.
"We may lose this sector if it is not consolidated promptly," Sakhnova said pessimistically. "Ukrainian rivals have merged into the Antonov concern," Makiyenko added. "Russian officials have failed to merge two aircraft-leasing companies in five years," Alexander Lebedev, the main owner of the National Reserve Corporation (which has a 36% stake of the Ilyushin Finance aircraft-leasing company's shares), told the paper.
In Lebedev's opinion, bureaucrats will never consolidate the Russian aircraft industry because they want to preserve their comfortable positions instead..
