Ain Hanschmidt elected as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of AS Eesti Gaas
The extraordinary general meeting of AS Eesti Gaas, held today, elected Ain Hanschmidt, Chairman of the Management Board of AS Infortar, Eve Pant, Member of the Management Board of AS Infortar, Leena Fedossejeva, Investment Director of AS Infortar and Martti Talgre, CEO of AS Infortar as well as Viktor Golinski, transit entrepreneur as members of the company’s Supervisory Board. The Supervisory Board elected Ain Hanschmidt as Chairman of the Supervisory Board.
“Today, the general meeting elected representatives of the new majority shareholder to replace the representatives of Fortum, former owner of Eesti Gaas, enabling us to appropriately manage the company and implement relevant expansion plans,“ noted Ain Hanschmidt, Chairman of the Management Board of the investment company AS Infortar and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Eesti Gaas.
“The company’s annual report is to be approved at the annual general meeting in June and we will most likely amend the Articles of Association as well and reduce the number of members of the Supervisory Board, consisting of 11 members today,” said Hanschmidt.
Ain Hanschmidt, new Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Eesti Gaas was born in 1961 and graduated from the specialty of Industrial Planning at the Tallinn Polytechnic Institute. Hanschmidt served as Deputy County Governor in Haapsalu, was the head of SEB Eesti Ühispank, and now holds the position of Chairman of the Management Board and the majority owner of the investment company Infortar.
Next to the new members, the other members of the Supervisory Board of Eesti Gaas are Aarne Saar, Juris Savickis and the representatives of Gazprom: Jury Bezzubov, Georgy Fokin, Aleksander Mikheev, and Boris Posyagin.
The holding enterprise Infortar AS owns 57% of the shares of Trilini Energy OÜ, founded for the purpose of acquiring a shareholding in Eesti Gaas. Next to Infortar, the company’s circle of owners includes Aarne Saar, long-term member of the Management Board and Supervisory Board of AS Eesti Gaas , Juris Savickis, Vice-Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Latvijas Gazeand Viktor Golinski, a transit entrepreneur.
AS Infortar is an investment company with an equity capital of 404 million euros that operates in shipping, real estate, hotel and printing industry. In addition to a 38% holding in AS Tallink Grupp, AS Infortar’s investment portfolio includes also approximately 90,000 m² of various hotel and spa premises in Tallinn and more than 350,000 m² of land in Tallinn and its vicinity. AS Infortar is the owner of the printing house AS Vaba Maa and the developer of the future multifunctional shopping and entertainment center Tallink City.
AS Eesti Gaas sells natural gas and electricity. The group includes AS EG Ehitus, specializing in the design and construction of gas pipelines and structures, and AS Gaasivõrgud, providing distribution services. The company owns five gas filling stations across Estonia. Eesti Gaas employs 205 people and, according to unaudited data, the group’s turnover this past year reached 130 million euros. In 2015, AS Eesti Gaas sold 386 million m3 of natural gas; the company has 1,570 business customers and 41,160 residential customers. Eesti Gaas also sells electricity to both, residential and commercial customers – electricity sales amounted to 9.7 GWh last year.
