The richest man in Russia will buy CTC Media with a fivefold discount

Alisher Usmanov and Ivan Tavrin. Photo: Kommersant

Alisher Usmanov, co-owner of UTV holding, together with his partner, Ivan Tavrin, agreed to purchase 75% of the operating business of CTC Media. For these assets, UTV holding will pay $ 200 million, writes RBC. In this case, the transaction has already reached the final stage.

Now CTC Media is required to bring its ownership structure in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation. Namely, with amendments to the law “On Mass Media”, which prohibits foreigners from directly or indirectly owning more than 20% in any Russian media.

The problem is that now the largest shareholder of CTC Media Inc., registered in the US state of Delaware, is the Swedish company Modern Times Group (MTG) with a package of 38.53%. Approximately 36% are traded on the NASDAQ exchange. And the remaining 25.4% belong to the Telcrest company in Cyprus.
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Now the buyer of the company must receive permission to conduct the transaction from the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), and the holding has already filed an application. Interestingly, UTV does not have $ 200 million, so the purchase will be on borrowed funds.

Currently, the capitalization of CTC Media has reached a minimum. Before the law “On Mass Media” was amended, that is, on September 17, 2014, the company's capitalization was almost $ 1.5 billion.