Gref’s new goal, Mikhail’s business and Leonid Boguslavsky in “Russian Norms!”

The E-Commerce market, which took off during the pandemic, has become the center of autumn events, and its participants are trying to capitalize the unique moment as quickly as possible. Ozon, the oldest player in the market, who could not become a leader, and this year was going to be sold either Jeff Bezos or Sberbank, announced the parameters of an IPO hastily planned instead of these transactions, which would give him up to $ 5.5 billion, Sberbank, which actively dreams of Russian Amazon for at least four years and managed to move it as partners as partners Alibaba, Yandex and Ozon, will now try to jump on the bandwagon of the outgoing train in partnership with the shareholders of M. Video, The Bell found out.

From Sberbank to Nasdaq

The whole story of Ozon, which in the late 1990s was a pioneer in the Russian online trading, is the story of a search for strategy and external investments. The company finally decided in the mid-2010s with the help of new shareholders from Baring Vostok and AFC Systems-since their arrival Ozon grew quickly, increasing both revenue and losses at the same time. This required even more external money, and since 2018 the company has actively looking for it. By the beginning of 2020, Jeff Bezos and German Gref entered the short list of potential investors.

It did not work out with the Bezos, but how serious the negotiations were, it is not clear. According to the owner of the AFK Sistema Vladimir Yevtushenkov, Amazon really considered investments in Ozon, and the general director of the company Alexander Shulgin even went to meet Jeff Bezos in early 2020 - but the story did not receive any continuation.

With Sberbank, apparently, everything went on. In the summer of 2019, while Sber was discussing the terms of the divorce from the previous partner, Yandex, he simultaneously negotiated Ozon, then wrote The Bell. As we learned from IPO Ozon Avenue published in early November, the companies managed to conclude a certain agreement on intent. About which ones - formally unknown, but judging by the amount of 1 billion rubles, which Ozon had to pay for the breakdown of the agreement (the company did not admit its guilt), the intentions were serious, and the stage of negotiations - advanced.

The situation, judging by the same prospectus, changed in September - it was then that Ozon terminated the agreement with Sberbank. On October 1, The Wall Street Journal wrote about the possible imminent IPO retailer in New York, and the next day, Ozon filed an official application for the US Securities Commission.

IPO also evidenced by the unusually large scatter of assessments of its organizers before the start of Road Show - from $ 4 to $ 12 billion. The time for accommodation was not the most successful, the Forbes sources indicated - against the backdrop of the success of testing new vaccines for the promotions of technology companies on the American market, they began to fall. But this did not apply to Russia, they were stipulated, Ozon, although in 20 years he did not break out into the market leaders, became the only Russian company in E-commerce, which reached the public market. The assessment of $ 12 billion from Goldman Sachs remained a dream, but, as the Bell said, close to the organizers, the company now counts on the capitalization of $ 5.5 billion - above the upper boundary of the range, about which WSJ wrote in early November. Ozon will receive almost $ 1 billion from the placement - five times more than he wanted to get when he began to look for new investors in 2018.

From Yandex to Gutseriev

Sberbank all this time was in the opposite direction: he had no problems with money and was the dream of German Gref about the creation of the “Russian Amazon”. The head of Sberus began to talk about competition with Jeff Bezos since 2014, and in 2016 introduced Vladimir Putin a plan for creating a “national ecosystem in the field of Internet commerce”. An obvious option, and even the corresponding Kremlin course “Turn to the East”, was the Chinese Alibaba Group-Sberbank with it and negotiated the creation of a joint venture for the development of E-Commerce in Russia, it turned out in six months later.

But after a few months it became clear that the deal with the Chinese fell apart-as Gref himself later said , because of their unwillingness to give control over the technology. In the summer of 2017, Gref announced a new partnership - with Yandex based on Yandex.Markete, in which both sides received 45%each, and Sberus promised to invest 30 billion rubles in the project. This relationship lasted about a year. By the summer of 2018, disagreements in managerial issues became difficult to say. Sberbank invited Yandex to buy a large package of its shares, to which the shareholders of Yandex did not agree. Even then, the parties began to study the possibility of a divorce, which was officially designed only in the summer of 2020, and in the same fall, Sber was also dispersed from Ozon, with which he entered into negotiations after the start of disagreements with Yandex.

There are not so many potential large partners in the online retail market for Hermann Gref. Now, as The Bell found out today, Sberbank sees as the owner of the largest Russian chain of M.Video electronics stores Mikhail Gutseriev and is negotiating with him about the joint development of the Goods.ru online market player, which M. Video launched in 2018, investing 6 billion rubles in a small project so far.

Several sources who told The Bell about these negotiations, they say that we can talk about the deal with the M. Video itself-not only the largest electronics seller in Russia, but also the fourth in revenue by the online retailer. In the group "Safmar" Gutseriev, this is categorically denied. But one more joint venture in E-Commerce on a parity basis in the history of Russian Amazon from Herman Gref can only be represented with great difficulty. Last week, it became known that the Sberbank partnership with Mail.ru Group in taxi services and food delivery, concluded on the same conditions, also began to crack at the seams.

Read more about the prospects of a possible transaction in our technology building on the weekend.

Planting

The strange thing Mikhail me

In some high -profile criminal cases - as, for example, the case of Michael Kalvi or Mikhail Abyzov - the struggle between the security forces and those who are trying to pull out the defendant are almost open. In some-as, for example, the case of the ex-owner of the Yugra bank Alexei Khotin, who this week took two unexpected turns at once-this struggle clearly goes brutally, but so abutted that no one really understands what's what. But in the case of the ex-Minister of Construction and Governor of the Ivanovo Region Mikhail, it seems that the hardware struggle began and ended even before the general public became known about the accusations.

Events developed rapidly. In the morning on Wednesday, the prosecutor general Igor Krasnov appeared in the Federation Council for the detention permit, which is necessary in the case of the auditor of the Accounts Chamber, which now works. Already during this visit, Krasnov gave Krasnov a sanction to the measure of restraint in the form of not even house arrest, but the “prohibition of certain actions” - EE is elected only for those under investigation, who have high chances to be released. And already on Wednesday evening, TASS, citing a source in the investigation, said that Mikhail Menu “will be able to avoid punishment”-because the statute of limitations in the case expires in February-March 2021, and until this time the investigation will definitely not end.

How long, how, by whom and in which offices the case of Michael was discussed and why the ex-governor decided to detain such a pomp three months before the expiration of the statute of limitations, we may never recognize. And it was discussed for sure - after all, indirectly, the case concerns not only the current chief of me, the head of the Accounts Chamber Alexei Kudrin, but also Roman Abramovich, whose associates became defendants in the accusations.

"Russian norms!"

The new hero is Leonid Boguslavsky

Investor-billionaire Leonid Boguslavsky in the 90s left a scientific career mathematics and engaged in business, and later created his investment company Ru-Net Holdings. Boguslavsky is not limited to Russia and is invested in foreign companies-now in his portfolio eight uninterrupted companies. In an interview with Elizabeth Ossetian, he said:

• How it turned from a businessman into a very successful investor
• Why was he upset when he saw himself in Forbes
• Why and how often foreign startups refuse Russian money
• Why are investors investing money in the company who do not earn anything

STATE

Artificial intelligence to survive yourself

The government decided in a new way to make long-suffering post-projects work-now they will follow the new Mega-KPI by the Chinese principle with the help of IT, The Bell found out . In total, more than a billion rubles will be spent on the control system.

The system will work on the basis of what officials call artificial intelligence - it will help to monitor the implementation of new KPIs on national projects, control both the KPIs themselves, and the expense of funds to achieve them, three officials who know about the development told The Bell. “AI sees and shows how demography falls or grows from the performance of the national project in the digital economy,” one of The Bell's interlocutors gives an example.

In the IT industry, artificial intelligence is treated with skepticism-one of the entrepreneurs who heard about the plans of the government hints that AI is rather a marketing wrapper, and in the reality of breakthrough mechanisms, they have not yet come up with the effectiveness of their own work in the government. Most likely, they will finish the new system on the basis of two existing ones - the “management” systems (collecting data for government) and “electronic budget” (all participants in the budget process enter its figures). An IBS IT-company received a contract for improving the management system for 66.5 million rubles in May.

Officials, whose achievements will evaluate the new system, hope that it will work better than the previous one, which in the summer of 2019 the process participants described in the expressions: "Slowly reacts, freezes and inhibits."

EDUCATION

How to predict the future in business

The Bell and the Berkeley Burkeley Business School (California) bring to Russia a new educational course to adapt to changes and forecasting the future - “Foresight and Future: how to choose the right strategy for your business”.

In the last weeks of this difficult year, we invite you to make a “jump into the future” to find out how to understand the trajectory of the changes in time and successfully use them in the interests of your business. The course will be presented by Dave Rochlin , Executive Director of the program “Innovation, Creativity and Design” at the Berkeley California University School of Business. Dave headed a group of 250 students of MVA Berkeley and 20 managers of innovative companies as part of a force sprint.

You will learn how to use the Foresight method tools to solve your business entities, which industries will be in demand in the near future, how to build a trajectory of local changes and how to build a business in a constantly changing world.

The course will take place on December 10, 15 and 17. You can read a detailed program and register here. The number of places is limited.

The company of the week

Arrival Denis Sverdlov goes to the exchange

The most successful startup with Russian roots in recent years-the manufacturer of electric vehicles Arrival ex-head of the YOTA operator and the deputy minister of communications Denis Sverdlov-will become a public company.

• Instead of conducting the classic IPO, Arrival will use an accelerated and simplified scheme with the absorption of a specially created public legal entity and will enter the NASDAQ exchange in early 2021.
• For accommodation, the company was estimated at $ 5.4 billion - significantly higher than $ 3.5 billion, received in two private investment 2020 with the participation of Hyundai and KIA, as well as the world's largest BlackRock investment fund (almost $ 8 trillion in management) and Winter Capital Partners related to Interrosa Vladimir Potanin.
• It is planned to attract $ 660 million, including $ 400 million from large investors, which are invested in the company on the basis of “private placement of a public company” ( PIPE ) - under it, investment funds receive the right to buy shares of a public company at a price below the market. Among these investors are the structures of Fidelity, Wellington Management, BNP Paribas and the same BlackRock.

We talked about Arrival and his business models here andhere . The company has a promising niche (transported electropurgies) from other electric car startups and a solid order for 10 thousand courier electric vehicles from the UPS logistics operator. Arrival counts to become profitable in 2023, and Sverdlov immediately after the IPO will enter the Russian TOP-30 richest with an assessment of the condition of about $ 4 billion-after the transaction it will have about 75% of the company.