The best selection of materials for the question: How much did Pavel Durov sell his share of VKontakte for? For what amount? Pavel Durov sold his share of VKontakte to the head of Megafon

How much did Pavel Durov sell his share of VKontakte for? For what amount?

It is only known for certain that the founder of the social network VKontakte, Pavel Durov, sold his remaining share of 12% to his friend, Ivan Tavrin.

But for what amount - this is their secret, maybe for now.

The creator of the popular social network VKontakte, Pavel Durov, sold his share to Megafon CEO Ivan Tavrin. The exact amount of the transaction is, of course, not disclosed, but according to preliminary estimates it was approximately 3-4 billion dollars. But we ordinary users of this site are more concerned about not closing this popular resource.

Neither party disclosed the exact amount of the deal, but presumably it was taken based on the total value of the VKontakte social network, which is $3-4 billion. Pavel Durov's share is 12%. Using simple mathematical operations, we find that the possible transaction amount ranged from 360 to 480 million dollars.

It’s completely unclear, some say it’s for billions (three, four, and all in dollars), others say the figure is four hundred million, but again, no one has seen specific documents indicating the amount, Durov remains silent, the buyer (Tavrin), and what’s the point and To one and the other to talk about the exact amount, the tax office knows, no one else and probably part of it was transferred in cash, so that without tax, in general, everything is cloudy and not clear.

The transaction amount has not yet been officially announced. Different sources estimate this amount differently.

The entire value of VKontakte is estimated at approximately 3-4 billion dollars. And the possible value of Durov’s share of shares could be $400 million.

Neither party (neither the seller nor the buyer) names a specific transaction amount. Who says that the transaction amount was no less than 400 million dollars. Quite a large amount. Some sources say that the deal took place in December 2013.

How much did Pavel Durov sell VKontakte for?

Reliably transaction amount By sale by Pavel Durov project shares In contact with unknown. But based on the estimated value of the most popular social network at $3-4 billion, the price of Durov’s 12 percent share is about 400 million dollars

Durov, the holder of a significant part of the shares in VKontakte, sold a significant part of the shares and of course this rumor instantly spread across the Internet, everyone is now just talking about this event. The transaction amount, according to some information sources, was about 400 million US dollars.

Pavel Durov sold his share in the social network VKontakte, which he founded. On January 24, 2014, 52 percent of the company came under the control of Alisher Usmanov, and another 48 percent remained with the UCP fund. Durov retained the post of general director, but his final departure is only a matter of time. This is confirmed by sources close to the management of VKontakte. Lenta.ru recalls the history of the country's main social network.

The history of VKontakte can be divided into three periods. The first is the shortest, when Pavel Durov’s social network was a clone of an American site that was not particularly well-known to anyone. The second is the most romantic, when the social network turned into the most popular resource on the Runet, forever, as it seemed, overtaking that same American site. And the third is the most dramatic, when this site was taken away from its creators within a year.

A lot has been written about the success story of VKontakte and Pavel Durov personally - posts, articles, and even entire books. The main thing, in a nutshell, is best formulated this way: Durov was able to build the most convenient, most lively and most necessary website. When VKontakte appeared, the question of what a social network is and what it is needed for was, in general, open. Having once taken Facebook as a basis, Durov, nevertheless, built his website from scratch, independently groping and guessing directions for its development.

Little is known about the personality of Pavel Durov - mostly myths and anecdotes. It is known that Durov is a vegetarian. It is known that he can afford - literally - throw money away. It is known that he can afford to get to his office in the historical center of St. Petersburg in a white Mercedes. And what this Mercedes can possibly do.

In 2006, the VKontakte team manually compiled a database of all Russian universities, updating all names and ensuring that each college was renamed into an academy. Then I added functions - from funny graffiti to audio recordings, news feeds and communities from which the current publics grew. It was VKontakte that explained to Russian users that the main thing on the social network is not the search for lost classmates, but the exchange of information.

As a result, VKontakte became one of the most successful Russian projects of the 2000s, and Pavel Durov became almost the most successful Russian manager, despite the fact that he did not fundamentally care about financial performance. For several years, he has argued that the most important thing for a social network is user loyalty. That the surest way to get a loyal audience is to take care of their interests. That the interests of the user are higher than the interests of investors, copyright holders, politicians, and security officials.

In a sense, the history of VKontakte is the history of the confrontation between Durov’s development team and these four groups. And Durov, who knew how to adjust where necessary, and where necessary to be rude, acted quite successfully in this field. Show the tongue of a dog to the special services - . Deal with the presidential administration, so that no one will undermine - . So what, Durov and the users, what is best for them.

The hardest thing, as it turned out, was with copyright holders and investors. For the time being, both of them could simply be ignored, but in the end, the history of VKontakte - at least the history of VKontakte under the leadership of Pavel Durov - ended in 2013, when fighters against piracy and shareholders (although others are attacking the company to the best of their ability).

VKontakte is a non-public company, at least as far as communication with the press is concerned. Durov, as befits an eccentric billionaire, can afford to talk to journalists only when it is convenient for him. News about changes in the fate of VKontakte arrived sporadically and were commented on within the company extremely reluctantly. People started talking about how fateful these changes were only in April 2013, when the co-founders of the social network, Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev, sold their shares in the company to United Capital Partners.

Actually, it was from this moment that the conflict, visible from the outside, began between the general director of VKontakte and its shareholders. UCP, which received 48 percent of the company, immediately began to make claims to the management of the social network - from justified ones (Durov for third-party projects) to conspiracy theories (Durov).

The main concerns then were related to the fact that the owner of UCP, Ilya Shcherbovich, is simultaneously on the boards of directors of Rosneft and Transneft. However, the fate of the social network was predetermined back in 2007, when Yuri Milner bought a stake in VKontakte. Subsequently, his share came under the control of Alisher Usmanov - and it was his people who ultimately took over the social network.

In April 2013, when it became known that the UCP fund had acquired almost half of the shares of VKontakte, it seemed that this event came as a surprise to Alisher Usmanov. It is no secret that he himself was not averse to purchasing these securities, but was in no hurry, believing that he had no competitors. Durov’s package, thus, turned out to be a kind of “pendulum” - in the event of a potential conflict between shareholders, it was the founder of VKontakte who could decide the fate of this or that decision, joining either Usmanov or Shcherbovich. Durov’s relationship with the latter did not immediately work out, so it is not surprising that the package eventually went to structures close to Usmanov. How two businessmen with considerable lobbying resources will share VKontakte without Durov is an open question.

Usmanov, who owns 39.9 percent of VKontakte, entrusted the management of his shares to Durov, did not make any claims against him and did not comment on the UCP attacks. Until December 2013, when unexpectedly in the spirit that Pavel Durov, of course, is a gifted young man, but the interests of investors are above all. Obviously, it was at this time that all the decisions were made - at least, Vedomosti's sources claim that it was in December that Durov sold his 12 percent of VKontakte to Ivan Tavrin, the general director of Megafon, which is controlled by Alisher Usmanov.

The events of January 2014 in this case are already a consequence of the December decision. Rumors circulating for many months about the departure of developers from VKontakte, led by Durov’s brother Nikolai, were supplemented by the announcement that the vice president and financial director, Ilya and Igor Perekopsky, who, together with the Durov brothers, had worked in the company since its founding, had left the team. Ilya’s place was taken by Dmitry Sergeev, the former general director of Kommersant, also controlled by Usmanov. The new financial director was Alexander Tretyakov, who previously worked at Yota, which, through Megafon, belongs to the same Usmanov. Relations with investors will be handled by Boris Dobrodeev, the son of the head of VGTRK, who previously headed the Internet asset management department at the Usmanov holding.

Photo: Sergey Semenov / Kommersant

That, in fact, is the whole story. The management of the new generation, who created VKontakte, was completely forced out of the company by hired managers in a few months of 2013 - nothing personal, just business. In recent months, the history of VKontakte has been reminiscent of a classic plot from American literature: the capitalists on the board of directors are step by step taking away the company he has grown from the hero; all that remains is to wait for the final vote.

Pavel Durov still remains the general director of VKontakte, calls Ivan Tavrin a friend and

The news, which the media trumpeted as “the latest,” actually took place approximately at the end of 2013: the founder of the VKontakte network, Pavel Durov, sold the remaining 12% of his shares to Megafon CEO Ivan Tavrin. The cost of this package of 3-4 billion dollars is also unreliable information: this amount is the estimated cost of the entire social network, which means that between 360 and 480 million dollars were paid for the deal. Formally, all the nuances were completed right now, and Durov himself on his page spoke both about the deal and that “his opinion will be listened to regardless of the availability of shares.” And he emphasized that he understands the deep essence of the project like no one else.

Capitalization - first version of sale

However, according to the publication Gazeta.Ru, citing its source close to Mail.Ru, Pavel Durov has reached a dead end in his relations with shareholders. The latter demanded increased capitalization. Their arguments are as follows: the peak of growth in the popularity of VKontakte has passed, which means that we need to place more emphasis on the monetization of the project.

Durov did not agree with this approach, because it would require changing a number of principles, which users clearly would not like. However, within the framework of the previous model of behavior, Durov was not able to give his decision to investors, so there was only one way to get away from the conflict - to sell the project.

Do not forget that this social network had regular conflicts with various copyright holders of song and cinematic content. Durov always stood on the side of users and although he did not directly support piracy, he did not even try to condemn it. Other investors did not seem to share such views and tried to see only mechanisms for increasing profit flows.

The need for total control - the main version

And yet, that version of the sale of the package, which is mentioned in other media only in passing, is a priority for us: the country’s authorities needed strict and complete control over VKontakte. always treated Durov as loyally as possible and tried to support him in front of other investors, but Usmanov himself was always directly connected with the authorities and could not ignore their interests.

Let's start with the fact that this particular social network was accused of distributing child pornography or pornographic materials for minors. However, it was not important to remove Durov here: he did not interfere with this kind of investigation. The problem is different: VKontakte has 60 million daily traffic and the most popular Russian project. And this is pure politics.

It is also no secret that after the seizure of the Ukrainian tax documents by the social network server of Ukraine, Durov dealt with the authorities of this country as harshly as possible. Later, when the uprising against the regime of Viktor Yanukovych began in Kyiv, Pavel Durov once again recalled the story with the servers in the entries on his page and wished the Ukrainians to defeat the authorities. And this strongly contradicted the Kremlin’s plans.

Groups in which opponents of the Ukrainian authorities coordinated their actions were quickly closed, the pages of active oppositionists and those calling for going to the Maidan were blocked. Durov resisted this as best he could, but in the Kremlin, apparently, control was considered insufficient. And a number of users relied specifically on VKontakte, relying on the fact that “Durov will not allow the authorities to uncontrollably gain access to personal data.”

The fact that the deal took place at the end of last year fits perfectly into this concept. What is happening in Ukraine is based on the capabilities of social networks - this has been taught by recent events in the Arab world. Having deprived the oppositionists of the opportunity to rely on VKontakte and having received complete information control over active agitators, Moscow is taking a step forward where it has already promised to “give $15 billion for support”...

New owner structure of VKontakte

So, Ivan Tavrin becomes the owner of 12% of the social network. Tavrin is the CEO of Megafon and the owner of 2.545% of the company’s shares. 50% + 1 share of Megafon are controlled by Alisher Usmanov’s AF Telecom Group. It is Usmanov who owns Mail.ru Group, which owns another 40% of the social network. The remaining 48% belongs to Ilya Shcherbovich’s UCP foundation, which in 2013 bought out their shares from the two founders of the network, Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev: about 40 and 8 percent, respectively.

As we can see, it is the UCP fund that formally acts as the key investor, although it is obvious that in fact management control is now in the hands of Alisher Usmanov. Perhaps Tavrin will not resell his share, because anyway, the necessary management structure has already been created.

It should also be recalled that it is Mail.ru Group that owns the main Russian competitor of VKontakte - the social network Odnoklassniki. As we see, the entire “social network” of Russia is gathered under Usmanov’s control (where you can see “My World” from Mail.ru). And although the authorities may have full access here, the process is still organized through the oligarch, which strengthens his influence to the maximum.

What will Durov do?

And here I would immediately like to assume: will Pavel Durov decide to start his own new project, which will differ from VKontakte purely symbolically, but will be exactly the social network familiar to users, which the new shareholders will soon gradually begin to deprive them of?

Theoretically, this is possible, but in reality, even if Durov had made such a militant decision (and no one doubts that such a thing would have been accepted as an attempt to “dump” those to whom he sold his shares), it would be almost impossible to implement it: the full power of the current “social networks” are collected in one hand, monetization has begun actively. Investing heavily in a new project, which even if successful among users will not be so financially profitable, is a very, even too big a risk. After all, it will also take time.

More likely, Durov will work on Telegram-style projects or something completely new. And yet we will leave him a 1% chance of trying to make a “new VKontakte”.

If the actions of politicians and economists seem senseless to us,
it means we simply don’t understand their true purpose.
“Cherche la neft”, Nikolai Starikov.

The co-founders of the VKontakte network sold 48 percent of its shares!

The United Capital Partners fund acquired 48 percent of the shares of the social network VKontakte. Vedomosti reported this with reference to Bloomberg.

UCP acquired the shares of the co-founders of the network, Vyacheslav Mirilashvili (40 percent) and Lev Leviev (8 percent). Leviev has already confirmed to Vedomosti that he and Mirilashvili sold their shares to the fund. The co-founder of the network did not disclose the amount of the transaction.

The founder of VKontakte, Pavel Durov, said that he had not yet received notifications about the sale of shares from Leviev and Mirilashvili. “According to the charter of VKontakte, current shareholders have a priority right to purchase shares in any sales, and we have not yet received notifications about a possible sale,” he explained to Vedomosti.

In the summer of 2012, there were rumors on the market that Konstantin Malofeev, chairman of the board of directors of Marshall Group, was going to buy out the shares of Lev Leviev and Vyacheslav Mirilashvili in the social network. However, Malofeev denied this information, saying that such rumors were spread by Pavel Durov himself. In December of the same year, businessman Alisher Usmanov, who owns 39.99 percent of VKontakte shares through the Mail.Ru Group holding, announced that he was going to increase his stake in the company. Usmanov’s shares are managed by Durov, who himself owns a 12 percent stake in VKontakte.

The investment fund United Capital Partners was created in 2006 to manage assets of private clients and partners. Among his priority areas are investments in shares of Russian companies and real estate. President and managing partner of UCP Ilya Sherbovich is on the board of directors of Rosneft and the state company Transneft. The UCP website was not open at the time of writing.

VKontakte was founded in 2006 and is the largest social network on the RuNet. As of February 2013, the daily audience of VKontakte was more than 43 million people. In the last couple of months, the social network has been at the center of several scandals. First, Novaya Gazeta wrote about the connections of former VKontakte press secretary Vladislav Tsyplukhin with the Presidential Administration. Then the Blue Buckets movement accused Pavel Durov of hitting a traffic police officer. As part of the investigation into this case, a search was conducted at the social network's office on April 16. Sources of the Hopes&Fears publication suggested that the search may be related to the conflict between Durov, Usmanov, Leviev and Mirilashvili.

The company USM Advisors, which manages the Internet assets of Alisher Usmanov (owner of a large stake in Mail.Ru Group), did not receive information about a possible transaction. “We do not comment on the sale of other people’s property,” the holding said.

As Gleb Davidyuk, managing partner of the iTech Capital fund, told RIA Novosti, it is unlikely that the UCP fund could have found a billion dollars, which could value almost half of the company. According to him, either the co-founders sold the stake for next to nothing, or UCP bought a stake in the social network for another company at its expense.

The deal is also unknown in the company USM Advisors, which manages the Internet assets of the main beneficiary of the social network, Alisher Usmanov. “We do not comment on the sale of someone else’s property,” the holding told Bloomberg. In December 2012, Usmanov announced that he intended to increase the share of VKontakte and was negotiating with all owners. At the same time, the businessman discussed possible management options with Durov. In the spring of 2012, Usmanov gave 39.99% of VKontakte, owned by the Mail.ru Group controlled by him, to Durov for management. Durov himself owns a 12% share.

In from and the epic ended with. All the events of the last days lined up in a logically complete chain. The final goal of all information dumps and police raids has emerged.

From today, VKontakte is owned by the state!

More precisely, that part of it that is part of the team of current President Vladimir Putin.

4 8% of VKontakte now belongs to the state-owned Rosneft and Transneft, another 39.99% of the shares belong to Alisher Usmanov, who clearly cannot be called an oppositionist, and all together this is 88% of the shares of VKontakte. Thus, the creator of VKontakte is in a strong minority and in this whole story, it seems, looks like a “victim.” But here everything is somehow very difficult.

I do not believe that Pavel Durov was an outside observer in all recent events and everything was decided behind his back. For the life of me, I don’t believe it. I think he was an active participant in this performance.

I don't think this new information supports my second version. After all, in fact, it turns out that VKontakte was sold two weeks ago. And what, Durov and Usmanov did not suspect for two weeks that the state had bought half of VKontakte?

Somehow it’s hard to believe this.

Plus, if the deal had already taken place, then why continue the information attack? In addition, Durov, Usmanov, and generally all significant Internet figures had a painfully calm reaction to the sale of VKontakte. It was as if nothing had happened.

Update from 04/23/13

Last night it occurred to me another version of the story with the sale of VKontakte. It is strange that this did not happen at the time of writing this article. After all, this version, it seems to me, is the most obvious and logical.

It sounds like this: the transfer of VKontakte to state control was a planned action and agreed upon with all interested parties/shareholders. They just wanted to do everything quietly, without attracting much attention. Or give a purely business “color” to the change of owner: they say, the event, of course, is not ordinary, but quite normal and not particularly significant.

But the clan of “liberals” could not be satisfied with the appearance of such weapons in the hands of the clan of “siloviki” and they tried to give the sale to VKontakte the widest possible publicity. So that the news about the owner-state spreads throughout the world. That is, all the latest information hype was organized by the clan of “liberals” with the aim of discrediting the new tool of the clan of “siloviks”.

And the story of the downed DPP officer seems to me to be the revenge of the “liberals” on Pavel Durov personally. After all, I think that the “liberals” probably also made advances towards the head of VKontakte. But he chose the “siloviki” (or was initially on their side).

This, of course, is a schematic representation of the development of events and I have no doubt that there were other nuances. But at the moment, I am confident in the main components of my version: the transfer of VKontakte to the control of the state in the person of the “siloviki” clan was planned and agreed upon; Pavel Durov, Alisher Usmanov, Mirilashvili and Leviev knew about this and acted (or did not act) within the framework of this plan; the information attack on VKontakte and Pavel Durov is the work of competitors of the siloviki clan. In confirmation, one can also cite the fact that the information attack has begun after sales VKontakte (VKontakte was sold on April 1-2, and the attack began on the fifth), they simply did not disclose the fact of the sale, so got the impression that the information attack preceded the sale, and not vice versa.

Illustration copyright Getty Images Image caption Durov is working on another project - a client for exchanging classified messages Telegram

The founder and CEO of VKontakte Pavel Durov confirmed that he sold his stake in the social network to the head of Megafon and co-owner of the UTV media holding Ivan Tavrin.

The founder of Vkontakte currently retains the post of general director. Durov promised on his social network page that the deal would not affect the management of the company.

However, observers have expressed concerns that Russia's most popular social network, which previously managed to maintain autonomy in its relations with the authorities, may now lose it.

"Achieved my goal"

“Over the past few years, I have been actively getting rid of property, giving away and selling everything I had - from furniture and things to real estate and companies. Before achieving the ideal, I had to get rid of the largest part of my property - a 12% share of VKontakte,” - wrote Durov.

I’m not going anywhere and I’m going to continue to monitor the quality of VKontakte Pavel Durov, founder of VKontakte

“I am glad that not so long ago I achieved this goal by selling my share of VKontakte to my friend Ivan Tavrin,” Durov wrote on his VKontakte page on Friday.

According to one of Vedomosti's sources, the deal between Durov and Tavrin was concluded back in December 2013.

The co-founders of the social network, Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev, also sold their stakes back in April last year. The 48% they owned was acquired by the United Capital Partners (UCP) investment fund, which is managed by Ilya Sherbovich, a member of the boards of directors of Rosneft and Transneft.

Another 39.99% of shares belong to Mail.Ru Group, controlled by businessman Alisher Usmanov. Tavrin, who bought Durov’s share, is close to Usmanov: together they own the UTV media holding.

Durov is not leaving?

In a post explaining the reasons for selling his share, Durov claims that this deal will not affect users.

“This change is unlikely to affect the management of VKontakte - the board of directors listens to my opinion not because of the presence or absence of my share, but because I created this network and understand its deep mechanisms. I am not going anywhere and am going to continue to monitor quality on VKontakte,” Durov wrote.

“In the end, VKontakte is the best thing that has been created in Russia in the communications sector. And my responsibility is to take care and protect this network,” he said.

At the same time, Nikolai Kononov, author of the book “The Durov Code” and editor-in-chief of the online magazine Hopes and Fears, suggested that Durov would not be able to retain the post of general director. According to Kononov, the authorities are interested in having a loyal manager at the head of VKontakte, which has essentially become “media No. 1” in Russia.

Back in the fall, information appeared in the media that UCP could initiate a meeting of shareholders to change the general director, but the management of the fund then issued a refutation.

This week, Ilya and Igor Perekopsky, who held the positions of vice president and financial director on the social network, left VKontakte.

The structure of the social network includes three top managers who worked in Usmanov’s structures, and Boris Dobrodeev, the son of the head of VGTRK Oleg Dobrodeev, will now be in charge of relations with investors in the social network. Previously, he headed the Internet asset management department at Usmanov’s company USM Advisors.

The ex-president of the Kommersant publishing house, Dmitry Sergeev, became the new vice-president of VKontakte.