Translated material
Russian Denis Sverdlov’s startup Arrival was listed on Nasdaq with a valuation of $13.6 billion
Forbes estimated Sverdlov's fortune at $9.8 billion. Arrival became the largest British company by capitalization on Nasdaq.
The British company Arrival of the former head of Yota and former Deputy Minister of Communications of Russia Denis Sverdlov placed shares on Nasdaq on March 25. The company entered the stock exchange through a merger with a special purpose company (SPAC) from the United States CIIG Merger Corp.
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The combined Arrival Group, under the ticker symbol ARVL, began trading at $22 per share, and the company's capitalization reached $13.6 billion - 2.5 times the $5.4 billion valuation at which Arrival was valued for the deal with CIIG Merger in November 2020. After the start of trading, Arrival Group quotes fell by 6.5%, but by the close of the session they turned to growth - the price rose to $22.8 apiece.
The Financial Times drew attention to the fact that the Sverdlov project set an Arrival record for British business - the placement became the largest ever listing of companies from the United Kingdom.
After the placement, Forbes magazine estimated the fortune of Sverdlov, who controls more than 76% of the shares of the combined company, at $ 9.8 billion. According to the online rating of dollar billionaires according to Forbes, the founder of Arrival with such an assessment would enter the top 20 richest Russians.
Arrival is one of the flagships of a young generation of electric car manufacturers. The company specializes in light commercial and public transport. The company plans to launch the entire product line from the fourth quarter of 2021 to the third quarter of 2023. It will include an electric bus, standard and large electric vans and a universal platform for compact electric cars.
Before launching Arrival in London in 2015, Sverdlov built a successful career in Russia. In 2000, he founded his first business of his own, the system integrator IT Vision. Three years later, the company merged with competitor Corus Consulting. In 2004, the businessman headed the Scartel company, founded by Sergey Adoniev and Albert Avdolyan. Skartel worked under the brand of the telecom operator Yota. As CEO, Sverdlov managed to initiate the development of a Russian smartphone with two YotaPhone screens, and in 2012 he became Deputy Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications Nikolai Nikiforov.
After resigning the following year, he left Russia and in 2014 established the Kinetik venture capital fund in Luxembourg. A year later, one of the first projects in the fund's portfolio was Arrival (the first name was Charge). Over the six years of its existence, Arrival has attracted several hundred million euros of investments. In 2020, $118 million was invested in the startup by the BlackRock investment fund and another $110 million by auto giants Hyundai and KIA. The project's investors also include the Winter Capital fund (the key investor is Vladimir Potanin).