Ivi is ready to follow Yandex in changing its corporate structure - Forbes

The online cinema Ivi is ready to change its corporate structure in order to enter an IPO and comply with the rule on limiting the share of foreigners in the service, which MP Anton Gorelkin proposed to introduce, writes Forbes.

Sources told the publication that Ivi has returned to the idea of ​​going public and is considering changing the corporate structure. According to Forbes interlocutors, the online cinema is studying a similar experience of Yandex - to create an additional governing body or, for example, to introduce a "golden share". The plans of the company's management are for Ivi to remain an independent enterprise that would develop "according to some kind of coherent policy" and would avoid any "reason for paranoia." “She (the company. - The Bell) should give the state a proper level of comfort, [show] that the company will work within the framework of some kind of political mainstream,” one of the Forbes sources explained.

• In December 2020, Anton Gorelkin, the author of the "law against Apple" , proposed to oblige the owners of audiovisual services operating in Russia to coordinate with the authorities the share of foreign ownership if it exceeds 20%. In a conversation with The Bell, Gorelkin declined to name the services to which his initiative applies, but noted that they are included in the register of audiovisual services of Roskomnadzor. It includes, among other things, ivi, Okko, Kinopoisk and Megogo - a total of 21 resources. So far, the bill has not even passed the first reading.

• According to Forbes, Ivi planned to hold an IPO before the end of January 2021. However, due to Gorelkin's bill, the listing was postponed indefinitely.

• This is not the first time that companies have been forced to change their corporate structure because of Gorelkin's initiatives. In 2019, the deputy proposed limiting the participation of foreign shareholders in significant information resources to 20%. This project hit Yandex - in it, foreign shareholders had 42% of the votes. The solution to the problem was the creation in the fall of 2019 of the Yandex Public Interest Fund, which was headed by Elena Shmeleva, co-chair of Vladimir Putin's campaign headquarters. After the IT giant changed the corporate structure, Gorelkin withdrew the bill.