MOSCOW. April 1 (Interfax-AVN) - The Almaz-Antei air defense consortium is being established on the basis of the Antei company. The consortium will comprise over 40 enterprises developing and producing air defense systems.
Business interests must prevail over individual ambitions, Igor Ashurbeili, director general of the Almaz research and production association, said in an interview with the Kommersant newspaper published on Monday. "Antei's organizational and legal base is preferable for speeding up the pace of corporation development. There is no need to register a new legal entity, an air defense consortium, which is just another mediating body that must be maintained at the expense of the industry," he said.
The Almaz-Antei consortium will effectively be a new company with a new team of managers comprising the best officials of Almaz. "If this gentlemen's agreement is violated, I will not be forgiven for such 'unification' by neither the Almaz personnel nor directors of our industrial cooperation nor my own team," Ashurbeili said.
Asked on the scheme of management in the new consortium, Ashurbeili said, "We all support the single-level system of management of the air defense industry that is written into the comprehensive approach that it implies." "If the president speaks about establishment of an air defense consortium, it must According to Ashurbeili, Almaz and Antei are the industry's acknowledged leaders, but they only develop and produce the bulk of air defense assets, not all of them.
"As to complications in management of 40 enterprises, the Russian Control Systems Agency with the staff of 101 people definitely has a harder time managing almost 700 enterprises. The defense industry is rich in competent personnel, the management of Almaz and Antei totals over 300 people," he said.
Commenting on the Control Systems Agency's concept of the air defense consortium establishment, Ashurbeili said, "there is no different concept, there is a set of interests of a group of officials and commercial bodies backing it." This has nothing to do with the internal logic of the air defense industry's integration process or state interests, he stressed.
"Under the current circumstances, the Control Systems Agency's proposal to develop a three-level system of managing, i.e. mediating, companies, to preserve the fifth managing company, this being Antei, and to do that in two stages, will result in the demise of the air defense industry," Ashurbeili said. "If it happens or if the air defense consortium is caponized, excuse me for the expression, to simple unification of Almaz and Antei on the basis of Antei, we will pull out of that project," he concluded.