Grigory Berezkin closed the deal to buy RBC. Top management of the rbk group of companies Rbk is the owner of the channel
RBC(from "RosBusinessConsulting" listen)) is a Russian media holding, including a TV channel of the same name, a news agency, a newspaper and a magazine. Holds industry conferences, business regattas and awards. It is the largest non-state media holding in Russia. The headquarters is located in Moscow.
Story
Over its more than twenty-year history, RBC has grown from a small news agency into a diversified company operating in the IT, television and press segments.
Since the early 2000s, the RBC website has been one of the most visited information resources on the Russian Internet (and, according to many competitors, also one of the leaders in "purchased traffic"). For several years in a row, the company's declared sales of online advertising were several times higher than the sales of other major advertising platforms, including Internet giants like Yandex, Mail.ru, Rambler and others, it was noted in an investigation by SmartMoney magazine published in 2006.
In 2002, RBC was the first among media holdings to place its shares on Russian stock exchanges. By 2008, their price had grown more than tenfold, the company itself was estimated by its management at one and a half billion dollars.
Change of ownership
In July 2009, RBC shareholders agreed with Mikhail Prokhorov's Onexim group to purchase the last additional issue of 51% of the company's shares for $80 million, half of which will go to cover debts. The issue of the withdrawal of assets is considered in court. The total debt of RBC at the end of August 2009 was estimated by the company's creditors at $207 million. In June 2010, the deal was completed: ONEXIM bought out an additional issue of RBC TV Moscow, which controls most of RBC's assets, for $80 million.
Further history (2010-2015)
At the end of 2013, after unsuccessful negotiations on the purchase of the Russian edition of Forbes, a number of its employees moved to RBC: editor-in-chief Elizaveta Osetinskaya, her deputy Valery Igumenov (headed RBC magazine), editor Elena Tofanyuk, columnist Irina Malkova and several correspondents, in order to improve The quality of materials was bought up by employees of other publications. Elizaveta Osetinskaya, as the editor-in-chief of RBC, took up the unification of the editorial offices of the magazine, website, newspaper and TV channel. Later, cost optimization began, during which the staff was reduced from 2000 to 1100 employees, non-core assets were sold (the publishing house Salon-Press, which produced glossy magazines).
By 2014, the RBC website became one of the leaders in citation according to Medialogy (in the spring its audience reached 20 million unique visitors per month), the RBC newspaper in September 2015 became the leader in terms of audience in the segment of daily business publications.
By 2015, the total sales of the holding reached a little more than five billion rubles, the EBITDA of the group of companies reached 426 million rubles. Nevertheless, the group's net loss amounted to 1.58 billion rubles, long-term debt rose to 17 billion rubles ($263 million).
Dismissal of chief editors
In April 2016, a number of media outlets linked searches in the office of the Onexim group and the vacation of the editor-in-chief of the RBC holding, Elizaveta Osetinskaya, with pressure from the Kremlin on Mikhail Prokhorov due to publications about the alleged daughter and son-in-law of Vladimir Putin Ekaterina Tikhonova and Kirill Shamalov, as well as about Panamanian archive. The press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov said that the authorities are not trying to put pressure on the editorial policy of the holding.
On May 11, it became known about the investigation of the fraud case at RBC, the defendants of which could be the holding's CEO Nikolai Molibog and a group of his subordinates.
On May 13, 2016, the holding lost its editorial management: Maxim Solius, editor-in-chief of the RBC newspaper, was fired, and by agreement of the parties, the holding's editor-in-chief Elizaveta Osetinskaya and the news agency's editor-in-chief Roman Badanin resigned. Nikolai Molibog explained the dismissals as "disagreements on some important issues." Journalists and editors of RBC were obliged to coordinate the texts before publication with the general director of the holding. Following the leaders, many editors and journalists planned to leave the publication; others decided to work "until the first note taken" .
Commenting on the dismissals, Alexei Volin, Deputy Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications, said that “the owner of RBC had every reason to be dissatisfied ... [since] his managers generated losses, not profits” and that “it’s completely pointless to look for politics where there is purely economics” . Osetinskaya denied this version, noting: Chief editors are not engaged in business, they manage the editorial office .
New leadership
On July 7, the Vedomosti newspaper, citing an internal letter, announced the appointment of Elizaveta Golikova and Igor Trosnikov as "heads of the joint editorial office", with a start date of July 14 indicated. Both new leaders have worked as editors of the newspaper Kommersant in the past, and until recently worked for the state news agency TASS.
On the evening of July 7, 2016, Elizaveta Golikova and Igor Trosnikov, together with Nikolai Molibog, met with the editors of the publication and the website to discuss the future information policy of the holding. The text transcript of the meeting was published on the website of the Meduza online publication, which received an audio recording from one of the participants in the meeting.
During the conversation, the new leaders announced the presence of certain restrictions, embodied in double solid, an example of the intersection of which Molibog and Trosnikov called RBC's coverage of the Panama Archive against the backdrop of Vedomosti and Kommersant. Also, RBC journalists were urged not to apply for resignation, because this wrong attitude neither to what you have done, nor to the company, nor to the shareholders. When asked about the possibility of publishing materials about Ekaterina Tikhonova in the future, Trosnikov refused to answer. Top managers called their main goal the preservation of indicators, respect for the audience, and unlocking potential.
In early July, the RBC magazine ceased to be part of the holding's unified editorial office, coming under the control of Molibog. The staff of the media and telecom department of the united editorial office moved to the magazine in its entirety. The editor-in-chief of the journal asked not to associate the rearrangements with the change of editorial board.
From May to July 2016, 20 journalists left the holding, including eight out of 10 deputy chief editors, four out of 12 heads of areas, services and department editors, one out of four special correspondents. The departments of politics, industry and energy resources, the Internet edition service, in turn, no one left. On August 18, Deputy Editor-in-Chief and Head of the Internet Edition Service Vladimir Motorin announced his resignation. In August-October 2016, most of the journalists who left RBC's print media began working on the Dozhd TV channel, which led to a split within its editorial office.
Under the new leadership, RBC began to publish fewer investigations; there were no longer any own texts about the Putin family. In terms of audience size, the holding competed with the largest state-owned media (in March 2017, the websites of RBC and RIA Novosti were visited by 26.5 and 27.4 million people) [ ] . The media reported dissatisfaction with the editorial policy of the publication on the eve of the presidential elections in the presidential administration, in particular - with Alexei Gromov).
New owner (2017 - present)
According to the BBC Russian Service, the decision to sell the holding to Prokhorov was made under pressure from the presidential administration. Also, according to media reports, Beryozkin was dissatisfied with the excessive politicization of his new asset, planning to concentrate his work on covering business processes.
Mission
media
The RBC media holding includes the Rosbusinessconsulting information agency, an Internet news portal, the business analytical portal Quote.rbc.ru, since 2003 the publication of the daily analytical newspaper RBC began (until 2014 - RBC daily); published both in printed and online versions) and the monthly business magazine "RBC", the business television channel "RBC-TV" (created in 2003), the high-tech magazine "CNews", a project for the sale of ready-made marketing information " RBC. Market research”, the automotive portal “Autonews.ru”, the portal about alcoholic beverages “Drinktime.rbc.ru” and a number of other online business, information, service and entertainment publications.
At the beginning of October 2007, RBC. Information Systems bought 89.99% of the shares of the Our Money magazine from KIT Finance and 100% of the shares of the weekly newspaper M² - Square Meter from ID Rodionov.
In December 2014, the media holding entered the media monitoring and analytics market by purchasing the specialized Internet service Public.ru.
IT
Another major area of RBC's activity is domain registration and hosting, which open up wide opportunities for customers to do business on the Internet.
Within the framework of the holding, a division "RBC-soft" was created, specializing in the development of software (SW). In 2007, it was transformed into the Armada company.
The RBC group of companies includes the largest community of hosting providers and domain name registrars in Russia and Eastern Europe, Ru-Center Group. Currently, "Ru-Center Group" includes seven key operating companies: registrars "R01", "
Andrey Sapunov came to the morning broadcast of the RBC TV channel as an expert on the stock market.
Most recently, Andrey Sapunov worked as a host of the RBC TV channel, and now he has visited this channel as an expert.
One can only be happy for Andrew. He is growing professionally. It is commendable.
However, this visit of A. Sapunov led me to think about the significant transformation of the RBC channel itself that has taken place in the past few years.
And it seems to me that this transformation did not take place for the better.
Previously, RBC-TV was much more interesting to watch. He was "sharpened for traders."
It was truly the first and only TV channel dedicated to the stock market and the economy.
But most importantly, a close-knit, friendly and creative team of those who were interested in what they were doing worked for RBC (at least that's how it looked from the viewer's point of view).
RBC has formed its own audience of viewers who are used to certain content.
Thematic programs about the market, economics, technical analysis attracted quite a certain contingent of viewers.
Now the RBC channel has changed. One gets the feeling that its owners are currently in active search - in search of new ideas, new programs, new audiences. Therefore, new programs bought in the West appeared on the air, such as “Business Sharks”, “Star Candidate”, etc.
I am glad that at least RBC decided to refuse from “culinary programs” in the mornings.
And then, when every day before the opening of the auction, the presenters appeared on the air, preparing pancakes and cappuccino in the Miele kitchen, it was not at all appropriate.
I also drew attention to the fact that new faces, new presenters are now increasingly appearing on the air of RBC.
But so far they are all kind of faceless and the same.
They cannot compete with the “old RBC” team.
They lack the charisma and creativity of the “former heroes of the air”.
The former positive atmosphere of the channel is gradually becoming a thing of the past.
And in general in recent years RBC-TV has lost a lot of personnel.
Look at what a stellar team worked at RBC earlier:
Now this team has significantly improved:
And what experts once shone on the RBC TV channel !!!
I recall a quote from Lermontov: “Oh, there were people in our time, not like the current tribe.”)))
Solid "stars" of trading.
Now there are no others, and those are far away ...
Let us recall only some of the former headliners of RBC broadcasts.
I sincerely hope that the leadership of today's RBC-TV will eventually find a new face for the channel.
Although, for now, judging by the changes taking place on RBC's air, there is still a big risk that the channel will not be able to acquire a new audience, but it can easily and quickly lose the old audience.
Grigory Berezkin bought a controlling stake in the RBC media holding from Mikhail Prokhorov, a spokesman for the ESN Berezkin group said. The deal is closed, ESN structures have acquired 65% of the shares of the media holding, he specified.
Berezkin's representative did not disclose the financial parameters of the deal.
RBC quotes the statement of the holding's CEO Nikolai Molibog: “Today we see RBC's goal not only to strengthen the holding's leading position, but also to take on the challenges facing the media and IT industries in the advent of the era of the digital economy. We are confident that relations with the ESN group, built on mutual respect, will allow us to jointly realize these opportunities to the fullest.”
“In my opinion, RBC is now one of the leading media holdings in Russia, and we see great potential for its development in various business areas,” Berezkin is quoted in the message as saying.
Prokhorov has owned a controlling stake in RBC since July 2010, now the structures of his managing company Onexim own 61.6% of the shares of the media holding. About 35% of the shares are traded on the Moscow Exchange, the rest - with minority shareholders. At the end of May, the Federal Antimonopoly Service granted the request of Sotol Project JSC (this company is part of the Berezkin ESN group) to acquire a 65.4% stake in RBC.
RBC includes a TV channel of the same name, a news site, a newspaper, a magazine, and an online high-tech publication, CNews. The group also has a business of Internet hosting and domain registration, conferences, etc.
RBC's revenue in 2016 increased by 9.7% to RUB 5.6 billion, EBITDA – by 16% to RUB 556 million. Most of the holding's revenue comes from media assets.
The total audience of RBC projects is 25 million people a month, the holding indicates with reference to Mediascope data. Of these, 17 million people watch the RBC channel on average per month, 10 million people read the RBC website, and 2 million people read the newspaper and magazine of the same name.
The fact that Berezkin agreed in principle to buy RBC became known in mid-April. The businessman expected that the deal would be signed before the May holidays, two of his acquaintances told Vedomosti at the time. But in the end, the signing was delayed.
By the end of April, the parties agreed on the financial parameters of the deal, including the issue of debt, according to two Vedomosti interlocutors close to both sides of the negotiations. The media holding has a large debt - at the end of 2016 it amounted to 14.9 billion rubles. The lion's share of this amount is RBC's debt to Onexim. The signing dragged on, as the parties bargained to the last on issues related to who - the buyer or the seller - would, in particular, be financially responsible if Rosneft still manages to sue RBC 3.2 billion rubles. for damage to business reputation. The court in April denied compensation to the oil company, but " Rosneft filed an appeal against this decision.
According to two Vedomosti sources, the new owner does not plan to change the holding team. Back in April, Berezkin met with the general director of the holding, Nikolai Molibog, and suggested that he continue to lead RBC, an acquaintance of the businessman knows. The editorial team, run by Elizaveta Golikova and Igor Trosnikov, will also be offered to stay, two Vedomosti sources close to Berezkin know. Molibog, Golikova and Trosnikov declined to comment.
Prokhorov is being forced to sell RBC, said a Vedomosti interlocutor close to Onexim. An acquaintance of Berezkin, on the contrary, is sure that no one is forcing Prokhorov to sell RBC: the businessman himself understands how uncomfortable this asset has become for him.
The businessman was ready to leave the asset before - last spring, the heads of several media holdings said that they received offers to buy RBC, but then, according to two interlocutors of Vedomosti, Prokhorov intended to get a "good price" - at least $ 250 million. Even then VTB was ready to act as the organizer of the transaction - the group was looking for buyers, one of Vedomosti's interlocutors knows. But in April 2016, the FSB and the Federal Tax Service conducted searches and seizure of documents at the head office of Prokhorov's Onexim group and its controlled companies (but not at RBC) in connection with "possible tax evasion." Sources close to Prokhorov attributed the searches to the fact that officials are dissatisfied with the independence of the editorial policy of RBC publications and their investigations, including about the family of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russian Railways, controls Rusenergoresurs (electricity supplier for Transneft). The businessman is also interested in the media business - in 2007, ESN bought a controlling stake in the publishing house (ID) Komsomolskaya Pravda. The ED does not disclose the current shareholder structure. The general director and co-owner of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Vladimir Sungorkin, said only that for him, "Berezkin is always a shareholder." A year ago, Vedomosti sources said that the main shareholder of the publishing house was Baltic Media Group (owned by the heirs of Oleg Rudnov), and Berezkin no longer manages this asset.
CEO of RBC
Member of the Board of Directors of RBC
Nikolai Molibog has been CEO of RBC since January 2014. From August 2013 until his appointment as CEO of the company, he was RBC's First Deputy CEO. From 2000 to 2003, Nikolai worked as a manager of a network of regional enterprises of CJSC Kommersant. Publishing House". From 2003 to 2004, he held the position of Deputy Managing Director of the socio-political newspaper Gazeta. Since 2004, Nikolai has worked for the Afisha company, where he has gone from the director of distribution and regional development to the CEO of the Afisha publishing house. From July 2010 to May 2013 he was the General Director of the united company Afisha-Rambler. In 2011, he was included in the rating of young Russian media managers by Odgers Berndtson in the category "Internet projects" with the highest rating (AA). In 2013, he entered the top three leaders of the CIS in the field of media business according to the Association of Managers of Russia. Nikolai graduated from the Faculty of Economics of the Novosibirsk Technical University of Communications and Informatics.
First Deputy CEO of RBC
Ekaterina Kruglova has been Deputy CEO of RBC since December 2013. Ekaterina began her career in the media business as an analyst in the development directorate of NTV-Plus in 2002. In 2003, she moved to the Afisha company as an analyst in the business analysis department. In the period from 2005 to 2010, she held the positions of director of business analysis and deputy general director of the Afisha company. After the merger of Afisha and Rambler in 2010, she was appointed to the position of Executive Director of the merged company, where she worked until May 2013. Ekaterina graduated from the Faculty of Sociology of the Moscow Pedagogical State University, and also received an MBA from the Mirbis Moscow Higher School of Economics.
Deputy General Director of RBC
Joined the RBC team in May 2014, first served as Director for Economics and Finance of RU-CENTER Group, since December 2014 - CFO of RBC Group. In his current position, he is responsible for the operational efficiency of RBC's digital products.
In 2003, he joined RIA Novosti, where he held various positions in the financial unit. From September 2011 to March 2014, Igor was Deputy Editor-in-Chief of RIA Novosti for Development. In 2005, Igor successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis and was awarded the degree of Candidate of Economic Sciences. In 2011 he received a diploma from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants ACCA DipIFR.
Corporate Commercial Director of RBC
General Director of "Media Mir"
RBC Deputy CEO for Technology
Since September 2013, Alexander Kononenko has been CEO of Media Mir LLC (part of the RBC Group and unites non-business Internet projects), and is RBC's Deputy CEO for Technology. Alexander has over 10 years of experience in the telecommunications industry. Previously, from May 2008 to March 2010, he held the position of Technical Director of Severen Telecom. In the period from April 2010 to May 2011 he was the technical director of the RBC Hosting Center, after which he moved to the position of technical director in the united company Afisha-Rambler. From May 2013 until joining RBC, he held the position of CEO for Technology at Afisha-Rambler-SUP. Alexander graduated from the Faculty of Informatics and Telecommunications of the Volga University. V.N. Tatishchev.
On Friday, May 13, RBC reported that virtually all top managers responsible for editorial policy are leaving the holding. "Lenta.ru" understands what is happening in one of the largest media holdings in the country and what preceded the departure of the editorial management.
What's happening
The holding officially announced that project editor-in-chief Elizaveta Osetinskaya, editor-in-chief of the news agency Roman Badanin and editor-in-chief of the newspaper of the same name Maxim Solius are leaving RBC.
Nikolay Molibog, CEO of the holding, explained this by saying that the opinion of editorial bosses about the future of RBC did not coincide with the position of their leaders. “Recently, we have been talking a lot about how to further develop RBC, and in these conversations we could not reach a consensus on some important issues,” he officially stated. So we agreed to part ways.
Who will take their place has yet to be announced. Following the departure of the tops, some employees of the united editorial office of RBC also announced their intention to quit on social networks.
After the announcement of the departure of the top management, RBC shares on the stock exchange in price.
What was before
In April, it became known that in the fall of 2016, Elizaveta Osetinskaya would retire while studying at Stanford University under the Innovation in Journalism program. It was assumed that the training would last one academic year, after which the editor-in-chief would continue to manage the editorial boards of RBC projects.
However, later, on April 20, the media holding announced that Osetinskaya would step down from management a few months before her academic leave - after the May holidays. Representatives of the holding claimed that her absence would be just temporary. It was reported that editorial projects in her absence would be managed by editors-in-chief, including Badanin and Solus.
How Osetinskaya's vacation was linked to searches at Mikhail Prokhorov's
The official news about the premature leave of the top manager appeared almost simultaneously with reports of searches in the Onexim group, the structure that controls RBC and other companies of Mikhail Prokhorov. At the same time, inspectors did not come to RBC itself, a representative of the media holding told Lente.ru.
The media wrote that the searches at Onexim may have political overtones: the authorities are allegedly trying to put pressure on Prokhorov to sell RBC. According to another version, they are trying to force the billionaire to sell the energy company Quadra. Shortly before the arrival of law enforcement agencies at Onexim, a story was shown on TV about violations in the work of Quadra. The media also claimed that RBC, which publishes materials about Panamanian offshore companies and investigations involving large businessmen and high-ranking officials, ignores Prokhorov's energy company, which is also associated with offshore companies.
What they say in the Kremlin
Press Secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov has repeatedly denied media reports about the pressure of the Kremlin on Prokhorov because of RBC articles that allegedly irritate the authorities. Peskov said that he communicates with Osetinskaya, as well as with many other media leaders. Shortly before her departure, the press secretary of the head of state met with her, but they did not discuss Osetinskaya's vacation, according to Peskov.
Prokhorov sells or does not sell RBC?
At the end of April, the media reported that after the searches, Prokhorov seriously thought about selling both RBC and Kvadra. The fact that a businessman from time to time negotiates the sale of a media holding is, in fact, not news.
It is known that he has been looking for a buyer since at least August 2014 (although representatives of the entrepreneur denied this information). Kommersant then wrote that Prokhorov needed media platforms when he was involved in politics: he was the leader of the Right Cause party, participated in the presidential race, and then headed the Civic Platform. But in 2014, the businessman retired from the affairs of the party, and subsequently spoke in favor of its complete liquidation.
Photo: Ekaterina Chesnokova / RIA Novosti
After unsuccessful attempts to make a career as a politician, Prokhorov's need for media assets disappeared, moreover, RBC worked exclusively to cover losses, and the shareholder had to invest considerable funds in it. The holding's current debt is $220 million. However, the billionaire liked what RBC journalists were doing.
How they tried to change the holding
A little over a year ago, RBC announced "Strategy 360", within which the holding should continue to live. The initiator and ideological inspirer of the document was Nikolay Molibog. “RBC's goal is to maintain revenue growth at a level no lower than the market average in the future. To achieve this goal, RBC plans to combine organic growth and profitable acquisitions in the fastest growing media segment - the Internet. RBC sees it as its key operational goal to ensure the high popularity of RBC resources among the Russian-speaking audience in the CIS countries and around the world as a whole. The main task, from the point of view of financial management, is to increase the profitability of the business," the company's website says.
However, during the two years during which Molibog ran the company, RBC generated only losses: 1.97 billion rubles in 2014 and the same amount in 2015. The holding kept afloat thanks to the sale of assets: it sold the Salon publishing house, the RBC Money payment system and Utro.ru.
Photo: Sergey Kiselev / Kommersant
There were also acquisitions. In 2014, the company bought Public.ru integrator for 19 million rubles (and 200 thousand euros to diversify revenue streams). The project was entrusted to supervise the digital director of RBC business projects Dmitry Kharitonov. Subsequently, according to the source, all activities on the project were frozen. The losses of Utro.ru alone, sold for only 30 million rubles, amounted to at least 100 million rubles in revenue per year. At least, this was the amount the publication brought in in 2013, and its daily traffic reached 400-500 thousand visitors per day.
RBC is not Prokhorov's first ambitious but failed project. In 2014, the entrepreneur paid 1 euro to the state for the innovative Yo-mobile project, on which he had high hopes before and in which he invested 150 million euros.
To whom it sells, if it sells
The sources of Gazeta.Ru call the National Media Group of Yuri Kovalchuk the most likely buyer of the media holding. At various times, the media claimed that Arkady Rotenberg, Vladimir Lisin, the Gazprom-Media holding, Zakhar Smushkin, co-owner of the Ilim group, and Grigory Berezkin, the owner of Komsomolskaya Pravda, claimed RBC.
Another version that refutes previous assumptions
The top manager of a large Russian media holding told Lente.ru that the sale of RBC had already taken place. This happened before it became known about the academic leave of Osetinskaya. However, he did not specify whether her decision to leave was independent or the new owner insisted on it.
