About eight to ten years ago the dynamically developing agricultural holdings have been assessed based on the amount of land they rented. The ratings had plain and simplistic names like “Who Owns Ukrainian Black Soil” or “Ukraine’s Largest Agricultural Holdings”, and the companies have been ranked by the size of their land banks. With time, investors for whom owners of holdings collected hundreds of thousands of hectares within the scope of preparation for IPO or private placement, learnt to be smarter. They’ve come to realize that scale is not a fundamental indicator and shifted their focus to financial performance of agricultural companies. Mriia’s default story brought the investors down to earth. It appeared that even the most inviolable thing – financial reporting – may prove to be just a nice picture.
Written by: Dariia Isakova and Olha Druzheruchenko
Today the first thing potential/operating/former creditors look at is the reputation of an agricultural company. How is it seen by the ones who make decisions on the issuance of money so much needed by the agribusiness? Having questioned 11 companies and financial institutions, we were bold enough to make a rating of agricultural companies’ reputation and financial stability. Respondents ranked the companies from 0 to 10 in six categories. Our partner PR Service, a company that has been rating the reputation of Ukrainian companies from various industries for several years running, has developed a questionnaire with the categories for our rating. Olena Derevianko, the co-owner of PR Service, shared details of those assessment categories. The companies were ranged based on their average scores.
The findings were quite surprising. Some of the rated companies (such as HarvEast) experience hard times, yet they were highly trusted by the partners.
Respondents:
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Credit Agricole, UniCredit Bank Ukraine, Integrites International Law Firm, Kreston GCG auditing firm, Alexandrov & Partners International Legal Firm, AIM Group, We Partners, Dragon Capital, KPMG, and PR-Service.
No.1 Mironivsky Hliboproduct
No.2 Nibulon
No.3 Astarta
No.4 Kernel
No.5 AgroGeneration
No.6 Ovostar Union
No.7 Industrial Milk Company
No.8 Agroprosperis
No.9 HarvEast
No.10 Allseeds Group
Source: http://landlord.ua/reiting_reputacii-i-finansovoiy-nadezhnosti-agroholdingov/
The article was originally written in Russian and translated by AgroGeneration