On December 4, 2017, Topline LLC, a member of the MAXIMUM Group of Companies, concluded a loan agreement with UniCredit Bank JSC in the amount of 83 million rubles. This is the first contract within the approved limit for the Group in the amount of 300 million rubles.

The main purpose of the borrowed funds is to refinance the Group's current portfolio in order to improve its parameters: increase the loan terms and reduce the interest rate. According to Maxim Kunaev, the First Deputy General Director of Maxim Logistics LLC, who oversees the financial and economic activities of MAXIM Group, this long-awaited event was the beginning of a qualitatively new stage of cooperation with credit organizations.

Maxim Kunaev: "Historically, the Group mainly cooperates with small "profile" banks that have the necessary expertise in the railway industry. Working with these banks suits us in many ways: these banks are well aware of the industry, they are characterized by pronounced customer orientation and flexibility, as well as high decision-making speed. However, the small size of these credit institutions imposes objective restrictions on the maximum possible loan terms and the cost of financing.

As the MAXIMUM Group's business developed, we began to realize that we needed larger financial partners capable of meeting the growing needs of the Group. We entered into a dialogue with UniCredit back in 2016, but at that time the bank was cautious and considered the risks associated with lending to railway industry enterprises beyond its corporate standards.

It is worth paying tribute to the professionalism of colleagues from UniCredit Bank - despite the inability to finance the Group at that time, they did not close the project, but continued systematic work on quarterly monitoring of both the financial indicators of our companies and the dynamics of the railway industry as a whole. This approach has borne fruit - in mid-2017, as the market situation revived, we resumed the dialogue, and taking into account the consistently high financial performance of the Group, in November 2017 Unicredit Bank approved a credit limit on the Group's companies in the amount of 300 million rubles. Undoubtedly, the beginning of cooperation with such a large bank is a recognition of the success of GC "MAXIMUM" in the railway transportation market.

We continue to work on attracting other major players in the banking sector to improve the quality of our loan portfolio, so I hope that in the near future we will see new big names in the Group's loan portfolio. At the same time, we will definitely continue cooperation with our traditional partner banks, which supported the development of our business during the difficult years of stagnation in the railway transportation market." 

JSC UniCredit Bank is a commercial bank operating in Russia since 1989. UniCredit Bank is the largest Russian bank with foreign participation, ranking 11th in the INTERFAX-100 rating in terms of assets according to the results of the 1st half of 2017. 100% of the voting shares belong to the UniCredit Group (UniCredit S.p.A.). 

UniCredit Bank holds a strong position in the Russian market of corporate banking services, at the same time being one of the leading banks in the market of financial services for private clients.