Sberbank will receive 46% of Rambler Group and pay off its debts

Sberbank will become the owner of 46% of Rambler Group and will invest from 9 to 11 billion rubles in the company’s online assets, RBCfound out . The publication's sources reported that the deal could change the management structure of the Internet holding. An official announcement should take place in the coming days.

Transaction details

• The package will be purchased “for cash-in investment,” that is, the investor will invest money in the development of the company.
• The deal does not include the combined cinema chain Cinema Park and Formula Kino, which are part of the Rambler Group.
• The management structure of the Internet holding may change - in particular, representatives of the bank may receive seats on the board of directors, but no personnel changes are planned.
• Restructuring the company's debts is not the main reason for the deal, says RBC's source. Sberbank is indeed going to refinance the debts of Mamut’s companies, but the entry of the bank’s structures into the capital of the Internet company is a separate transaction.
• The impending deal was reported by Reuters at the end of February and confirmed by The Bell sources. But then representatives of the companies denied it: the information that the bank “is buying Rambler Group (or individual assets) is not true,” the negotiations only concern the refinancing of Rambler Group loans from Trust Bank, a Sberbank representative claimed.
• Reuters sources reported that the purchase of Rambler was supported by German Gref and his first deputy Lev Khasis (he is responsible for the bank’s digital business). The rest of the top managers allegedly tried to convince them: they did not see in Rambler “complementarity for the bank’s digital ecosystem” and did not see the point in transferring Rambler’s related businesses to Sberbank - for example, media assets.
• Later, the press services of Sberbank and Rambler Group confirmed to RBC the fact of negotiations, but not the fact of the transaction.

Rambler Group assets

• The most promising project of the Rambler Group is the Okko online cinema. The revenue of the project, which Alexander Mamut bought a year ago, grew by 81% in 2018, to 2.5 billion rubles. The Bell's source said that among all Rambler assets, Sberbank is primarily interested in Okko, since the video service is an important component for clients in the Sberbank ecosystem.
• Other assets include online media Gazeta.Ru, Lenta.Ru and Championat.com, Rambler News Services agency, blog platform Livejournal.com, Internet portal Rambler and Afisha.ru.

Rambler Group problems

• The company has many debts, the exact amount of which is unknown.
• In 2014, Rambler took out a loan of 4.6 billion rubles from Otkritie, where Mamut was a minority shareholder with a 6.7% stake. According to Frank Media, Mamut was supposed to return it back in 2017, but then the businessman did not have the money for this and the entrepreneur was “looking for where to refinance.” In the same year, the Expert RA agency assigned a pre-default rating to Rambler and withdrew it due to the company’s refusal to update it.
• In December last year, Otkritie, by decision of the regulator, transferred problem debts and non-core assets totaling 438 billion rubles to Trust Bank, among them were the debts of Mamut’s company, Vedomosti wrote .
• The debts of Mamut’s companies amount to “billions of rubles,” said the chairman of the Trust, Alexander Sokolov, in an interview with RBC. As of April 2019, the key assets of the Internet holding were pledged against loans to Trust Bank.

Why does Sberbank need this?

• The management of Sberbank, led by German Gref, has the ambition to turn the bank into a technology corporation. On April 23, it became known that Sberbank had registered a new trademark - the Sber brand, which will help add it to the names of new projects without filing for a separate patent for new projects. The transformation of Sberbank into a technology company is a priority of the 2020 strategy, which the bank’s president German Gref presented in December 2018.
• Last fall, The Bell was the first to write that the bank was seriously interested in increasing its share and its role in Yandex (the bank currently owns a “golden share” in Yandex, which allows blocking the purchase or sale of more than 25%, but does not give other rights ). Negotiations with Mamut began after it became clear that Yandex founder Arkady Volozh was not going to leave the company or reduce his stake in it.