Sberbank received control at Rambler Group

Sberbank bought 8.5% of the Rambler Group shares, becoming a group of a group of a group: now the State Bank owns 55% Rambler. Sberbank promises to invest about 2 billion rubles in the company. Most of them will go to the development of the OKKO online cinema. In June, RBC wrote that the desire of Sberbank to put Rambler under full control may be associated with the Nginx case.

Sberbank will invest 2 billion rubles in Rambler Group, the bank statement refers to RBC. For this, the bank will receive 6.95% of the shares of the group belonging to one of the Rambler shareholders, the ERA Capital investment company. Another 1.5% “Sber” will acquire from A&NN Alexander Mamut. The total share of the bank in the capital of the group will be 55%, before this transaction it was 46.5%.

Most of the money from the new round of financing will go to the development of OKKO: its investors expect that the online cinema will become the market leader in 2021. According to TMT Consulting for March, OKKO in 2019 with a share of 24%took second place in the market after IVI (36%), but became the leader in revenue - 96%. This was made possible thanks to Sberbank’s investments, analysts noted.

In June, RBC wrote that Sberbank began negotiations with Mamut (both belonged to 46.5% of the shares) on building a share of the bank in the Rambler Group to the control. The publication was a possible reason was the actions of the Rambler Mommy in the Nginx case , which Sberbank could consider as not corresponding to the terms of the agreement between the companies. If Rambler transferred the rights to the requirements for Nginx, owned by the Mamut of the Company personally before the December searches in Nginx, then the transaction was supposed to be submitted for consideration by the Board of Directors of the SP, one of the interlocutors of Kommersant claimed.

The criminal case and searches in Nginx made a lot of noise in December 2019 (we wrote in detail about this here ). The case was opened at the request of Lynwood Investments Alexander Mamut. The claims concerned the Rambler Group allegedly have exclusive rights to Nginx software, since the founder of this company previously worked in the group. At the beginning of the conflict, Sberbank President German Gref expressed his dissatisfaction that disputes between companies are leaking in the criminal plane, and the first deputy chairman of the Bank of the Bank Lev Hasis on the air of Kommersant FM proposed to convene a special board of directors of Rambler on this issue to analyze this situation in detail and see the documents.