ATB

The corporation includes:

• ATB-Market LLC:

EDRPOU code: 30487219

Founded in 1999.

Registered capital: UAH 9.93M.

Address: Dnipro, Alexander Pol Av., 40.

• Retail- Development LLC:

EDRPOU code: 34735704

Address: Dnipropetrovsk region, village Sloboschanske, Vasyl Sukhomlynsky St., 76.

Founded in 2006.

• Favorit Plus Meat-Processing factory LLC:

EDRPOU code: 37373551

Address: Dnipropetrovsk region, village Sloboschanske, Vasyl Sukhomlynsky St., 76.

Founded in 2010.

• Kviten Confectionery factory LLC:

EDRPOU code: 30664064

Address: Dnipropetrovsk region, village Sloboschanske, Vasyl Sukhomlynsky St., 76.

Founded in 2001.

• Voskhod Sport Club LLC:

EDRPOU code: 32998588

Address: Dnipropetrovsk region, village Sloboschanske, Vasyl Sukhomlynsky St., 76.

Founded in 2004.

• ATB is equally owned by entrepreneurs Butkevych Hennadiy, Yermakov Yevhen and Karachun Viktor.
• The chairman of the board and general director of the corporation is Markov Borys.

ATB retail chain operates 1077 stores in 22 regions of Ukraine. Every day, 4M Ukrainians make purchases from ATB stores. Over 60 thousand employees work here. The retail chain turnover for 2019 was UAH 128bn. The total amount of taxes and duties of ATB-Market companies is UAH 9.5bn.

Opening a discounter shop costs $1.5–2M in average.

In 1993, six grocery stores of the AgroTechBusiness were opened in the Dnepropetrovsk (now — Dnipro). The first store under the ATB brand (short for "AgroTechBusiness") was opened in 1998. The network itself was officially registered in 2003.

‘At first, we were choosing traditionally neutral names for stores, such as Klen, Topol, Kalina (Eng. — Maple, Poplar, Guelder). One of my colleagues later joked that then the time came when all the trees ran out. I had to switch to a simple numbering strategy,’ Boris Markov, the General Director of ATB Corporation, told reporters.

profiles

In the early 2000s, the company chose the ‘discounter strategy’ of the store net development that offers goods priced lower the average on the market. They chose the German Lidl as an example.

Ten years ago, the media wrote that even the partners did not know the owners of the ATB network in person. The media often quoted the former director of the Lithuanian Bumi-Market network Alexander Lanetsky:

‘In 2006, ATB let for rent two of its stores in Zhytomyr. All the conditions were agreed by phone, and contracts were exchanged by mail. Usually, such things are done via direct negotiations with the owners. But there were no meetings: the administrative manager simply handed over the keys to the stores.’

profiles

• In March 2020, the Antimonopoly Committee opened a case due to high prices for goods in Kyiv stores, including ATB. The company explained the increase in prices by an increase in the purchase prices of suppliers.

As for the latter, they referred to a significant increase in production costs due to quarantine measures.

‘The AMCU price monitoring showed that the prices of certain products and personal protective equipment increased simultaneously in different trading networks,’ wrote Khmelnitskyy Aleksey, head of the regional branch of the AMCU, on Facebook. ‘This may indicate anti-competitive behavior of the market participants.’

profiles

• In April 2020, the corporation accused officials of fraud. We are talking about ATB grocery sets that they were distributing on their own behalf.

‘Representatives of local governments and deputies of various levels take the initiative to implement the project in their favor, deliberately misleading the recipients of assistance and thus solving their future political ambitions,’ the company website said.

profiles

As an example, the company names the deputy from Berdyansk Viktor Tsukanov and the team of Igor Butkov from Severodonetsk.

• The owners of the store network have repeatedly been accused of allegedly trading in annexed Crimea and Donbass. For instance on the peninsula, instead of ATB stores, PUD stores appeared.

The owners, however, claim that the war in Donbass resulted in ATB loss of 152 stores and a distribution center. The damage amounted to UAH 7bn.

According to Butkevych, the store network was ‘nationalized’, and later made it over to ‘either a wife or a mistress’ of Alexander Zakharchenko, a militant from ORDLO. In 2017, the PUD store network was allegedly bought by Krasnodar (Russia) Agrocomplex named after N.I. Tkachev.

In 2018, the Russian media published information that PUD was ‘owned’ by an offshore company associated with the family of Alexander Tkachev, the ex-head of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation.

• In April, ATB, together with the Ministry of Social Policy, launched a charity project for targeted assistance to socially disadvantaged groups. They transferred 571 572 grocery sets worth more than UAH 100M.
• The company also paid for the delivery of equipment for the operational diagnosis of coronavirus to Ukrainian doctors from France.
• "ATB" helps refugees, ATO fighters and their families. In 2016-2017, 12 programs of targeted assistance were implemented with the total budget of UAH 6.5M. Then, UAH 20M was allocated for providing support to the Ukrainian army, families of ATO fighters, refugees, and children of the ‘gray zone’ of the armed conflict.