MOSCOW, June 19 (Reuters) - Russia's largest carmaker AvtoVAZ is not considering any partnerships with Germany's Opel or Canada's Magna, its president said on Friday, contradicting remarks from the head of Sberbank.
"No one has made us any such offers," said AvtoVAZ chief Boris Alyoshin. "I don't know how this question can hypothetically be discussed."
German Gref, the chairman of Sberbank, Russia's largest lender, said on Thursday that AvtoVAZ, maker of the Lada, may need to partner up with Opel in order to bridge the wide technological gulf that has kept it from making a globally competitive car. Sberbank, in partnership with Canadian auto parts group Magna, reached a deal last month to buy a controlling stake in Opel to save the German car maker from the bankruptcy of its U.S. parent company, General Motors.
A key motivation for taking part in the deal, which will give Sberbank 35 percent of Opel, is to restructure the Russian automotive industry using Opel's technology.
Analysts have said that the restructuring would involve pooling the Opel stake with Russian automotive assets, possibly including AvtoVAZ and GAZ Group, to create a new state-controlled industry champion.
The comments from Sberbank's Gref were taken as confirmation that AvtoVAZ could become part of this new holding.
However, Alyoshin said on Friday that AvtoVAZ already had access to European technology through France's Renault, which owns a 25 percent stake in the Russian firm.
"We already have a partner, an anti-crisis programme, a memorandum with banks to finance our investment programme," Alyoshin said. "There are no other offers."
However, Gref said on Thursday that an offer could be in the works.
AvtoVAZ "either needs to go under Renault's management, or look for another option -- for example, with Magna and Opel," Gref said.
"This has to get done in the next half year, and most likely we will all come together and formulate a joint proposal." (Reporting by Anton Doroshev; writing by Simon Shuster; editing by Karen Foster)