‘The current economic crisis in Russia opens way to raider attacks and hostile takeovers. Economic troubles (mainly companies’ debts) make businesses more vulnerable and less capable of countering such strikes. Living within the crisis information field lets offenders hide their attacks under the overall deluge of negative data; alternatively, takeover attempts can be easily disguised as ‘financial aid’. All this poses additional threats for a business’s economic security,’ Europe-Asia Information and Consulting Center’s General Director Oleg Borisov said to an UrBC reporter.

‘We haven’t got the statistics as to the number of raider attacks and hostile takeovers during a crisis yet; even so, I am positive that they are on the increase, since we keep getting increasingly more clients facing such problems. Unfortunately, we’ll only have more of them in the nearest future,’ he noted.

‘The Russian market is full of large-scale organizations that, for this or that reason, actually have some impressive sums readily available. These companies are now busy gathering data on certain businesses or assets they’d like to acquire soon. At the moment, they are just waiting for these assets’ price to plummet to its lowest due to growing liquidity, delayed payments, and loan refinancing problems. It is also quite probable that these organizations might actually be trying to affect the asset-devaluating process in this or that way,’ the expert explained.

‘It’s important to realize that a hostile takeover threat is, in fact, a motivating factor that can make any business develop. The problem is, not all kinds of competition could be fair under a crisis; some of the methods could even be illegitimate, and these are the risks one has to be aware of.

As for the raider attack prevention, one thing any business proprietor must bear in mind is that the more transparent and law-abiding the business is, the harder it is to take it over. If a company obeys the law strictly, it can only be taken over through a fair agreement or illegal methods. In case some criminal methods are employed, the only way to save one’s business, health and life itself is to use professional services and appeal to law-enforcement agencies. Any attempts to deal with the problem on one’s own are unacceptable, since raiders employ people with a lot of experience, including criminal one. A small or a medium enterprise will find it virtually impossible to fight them independently,’ Europe-Asia Information and Consulting Center’s GD said.