Alisher Usmanov’s USM announced the sale of 57% of VK votes to the Sogaz group

Alisher Usmanov’s holding USM has completely withdrawn from the capital of VK Group. The company announced the sale of 57% of VK’s votes to Gazprom’s subsidiary, the Sogaz group. About it informs RBC with reference to the Sogaz press service.

USM owned 57.3% of VK’s voting shares through MF Technologies, 45% of which was held by MegaFon.

The amount of the deal was not disclosed.

Shares of VK (former Mail.ru Group) right there have grown by 3.4%, up to 1,308 rubles.

“Shareholding in VK has largely determined the development and has become an important part of the history of our holding. Our approach is the maximum freedom of action for young and energetic management, therefore, three years ago, my partners and I transferred the right to vote with our VK shares to its management. Today we are withdrawing from the capital of the company, leaving it at the peak of indicators both in terms of the number of audiences and in terms of financial metrics, ”Usmanov said.

In November, another Gazprom subsidiary, Gazprombank, acquired a stake in MF Technologies. Sberbank sold 36% of its shares to Gazprombank for 12.8 billion rubles. Based on this estimate, Kommersant assumes that the share of VK, bought out by Sogaz, could have cost it 16 billion rubles.

Another 10% of MF Technologies is owned by Rostec. 9% directly belonged to USM – this package “is in a deal with Gazprombank”, the holding explained to the publication.

The VK Group (formerly Mail.ru Group) includes the social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, the Mail.ru mail service, the Yula ad service, shares in the Delivery Club food delivery service, Citymobil taxi, etc.