Who are Facebook’s new investors, and more importantly, who’s investing in them?

Written on 27th May 2009                                                                                                              4 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.

Yesterday, Facebook confirmed Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian based investment company, had invested $200 million into the social network in exchange for 1.96%.

The investment values the company at a measly (sarcasm) $10 billion, $7 billion MORE than its previous valuation in April.

So who is DST and more importantly, who are the individuals behind the company?

Digital Sky Technologies has up until focused primarily on Russian-speaking markets. Its holdings reportedly hold over 70% of all pageviews in the Russian speaking internet, with a potential audience of over 300 million people. Its companies hold the #1 and often also the #2 and #3 positions in all CIS states, including Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Armenia.

Formed in 2005, DST was founded by Yuri Milner and Gregory Finger, both of whom are majority owners of Russia’s Mail.ru, Russia’s most popular free email service and second most visited website and . DST is also sole investor in vKontakte, Russia’s most popular social network.  Facebook is No. 59 in Russia and has roughly 200,000 users in the country, but it has 200 million users worldwide.

Yuri Milner is  CEO and Founding Partner of DST. He was a Russian physicist who graduated from Moscow’s state university, and subsequently conducted research at the Institute of physics in the Russian Academy of Sciences between 1985 and 1989. In 1990, he left to study for an MBA at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Back in Moscow, Milner joined Menatep, followed by the World Bank where he was involved in the development of the financial sector in Russia.

In 1996, he was responsible for the first tender offer for a public company in post Soviet times. Yuri subsequently started investing in the Internet sector in 1999.

Yuri has held various management positions in Russia since, including the CEO of Mail.ru between 2001 and 2003, Currently, Yuri serves on the board of directors of Mail.ru, vKontakte and Forticom.

Gregory Finger graduated from the Moscow Institute of Chemical Engineering  in 1988 with a specialization in automated control systems. Between 1992 and 2005 Gregory was the head of the Moscow office of New Century Holdings (NCH), the largest Western financial investor in the Russian speaking and Eastern Europe markets. (more…)

Alexander Tamas, Alisher Usmanov, digital sky technologies, dst, facebook, Gregory Finger, Yuri Milner

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Russian oligarchs slowly taking over Russian tech industry?

Written on 23rd September 2008                                                                                                              1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Russian business daily Kommersant reports that oligarch Alexander Mamut’s investment company ANN acquired the largest mobile phone retailer in Russia, Euroset. At first hand, this doesn’t seem to be a web-related topic, yet I decided to report about it as it symbolizes the growing influence of oligarchs on the Russian tech scene. Mamut, who owns a significant stake in LiveJournal-owner SUP, is well-known as a Kremlin loyalist.

Alexander Mamut

The deal valued Euroset at an enterprise value of $1,25 billion including $850 million in debts, Kommersant said.

Here come the oligarchs

In the beginning of August, Alisher Usmanov announced that he wanted to buy a 20 percent stake in Russian search giant Yandex. This man is the founder of Metalloinvest (mining company, €3.3 billion a year) and owner of publishing house Kommersant.

Gentlemen like these two keep buying stakes in Internet and tech companies. Many critics fear that at some point, these oligarchs might partner up with Putin to secure the government’s control on this booming and important industry. During the announcements of the LiveJournal and Kommersant acquisitions, storms of protest arose. All without any consequences.

I hope these critics are mistaking, but I’m afraid that in a few years, we have to admit they had been right all along.

Alisher Usmanov, Euroset, Kommersant, LiveJournal, Metalloinvest, oligarchs, russia, SUP, yandex

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Russian mining and publishing billionaire goes after a stake in Yandex

Written on 4th August 2008                                                                                                              8 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

There’s a new loner in the wild west of Russian search engine land, where millions of dollars are spent and Google is just small potatoes. Alisher Usmanov is his name. This man is the founder of Metalloinvest (mining company, €3.3 billion a year) and owner of publishing house Kommersant. As a true media visionary, he has decided to invest in the Russian Internet industry. And when a business man like him enters a market, you know he’s gonna do it with a bang.

What about an acquisition of a 10%-20% stake in Russia leading and Europe’s no. 3 search engine Yandex ($167 million in 2007)? Usmanov wants to buy them from the founding fathers of Yandex as well as via the shares at the upcoming IPO on NASDAQ. To give you an idea about the importance of these negotiations, the IPO was valued up to $5 billion. That means the stake could be worth a staggering $1 billion.

The Quintura blog offers some more background info on Alisher Usmanov’s Internet adventure. Usmanov might be encouraged by the Russian government to get a grip on this booming Internet industry, like he was when he bought the newspaper Kommersant.

Alisher Usmanov, google, Kommersant, Metalloinvest, nasdaq, russia, yandex

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