Grigory Berezkin closed the deal to buy RBC. Editor-in-chief of RBC magazine

CEO of RBC Group of Companies

He has been CEO of RBC since January 2014. Member of the Board of Directors of PJSC RBC since January 2014. From August 2013 until his appointment as CEO of the company, he was RBC's First Deputy CEO.

From 2000 to 2003, he worked as a manager of a network of regional enterprises of CJSC Kommersant. Publishing House". From 2003 to 2004, he held the position of Deputy Managing Director of the socio-political newspaper Gazeta. Since 2004, he worked at the Afisha company, where he worked his way up from the director of distribution and regional development to the general director of the publishing house "Afisha". From July 2010 to May 2013 he was the General Director of the united company Afisha-Rambler. In 2011, he entered Odgers Berndtson's "Rating of Young Russian Media Managers" in the "Internet Projects" category with the highest rating (AA). In 2013, he entered the top three leaders of the CIS in the field of media business according to the Association of Managers of Russia. Included in the top ten managers in the Media Business category of the Top 1000 Russian Managers rating.

Graduated Faculty of Economics Siberian technical university communications and informatics.

Ekaterina Kruglova

Deputy General Director of the RBC Group of Companies, General Director of the RU-CENTER Group of Companies

He has been Deputy CEO of RBC since December 2013. She began her career in the media business as an analyst in the development directorate of NTV-Plus in 2002. In 2003, she moved to the Afisha company as an analyst in the business analysis department. In the period from 2005 to 2010, she held the positions of director of business analysis and deputy general director of the Afisha company. After the merger of Afisha and Rambler in 2010, she was appointed to the position of Executive Director of the merged company, where she worked until May 2013.

Ekaterina graduated from the Faculty of Sociology of the Moscow Pedagogical state university, and also received MBA degree at MMVSHB Mirbis.

Igor Selivanov

Financial Director of the RBC Group of Companies

Financial Director of the RBC Group of Companies since December 2014. Since May 2014, Igor Selivanov has served as Director for Economics and Finance at RU-CENTER Group. In 2003, he joined RIA Novosti, where he held various positions in the financial unit. From September 2011 to March 2014, Igor was Deputy Editor-in-Chief of RIA Novosti for Development. In 2005, Igor was awarded the degree of Candidate of Economic Sciences. In 2011 he received the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants ACCA DipIFR diploma. Ranked in the top three financial directors in the Media Business category of the Top 1000 Russian Managers rating.

Julia Shulga

Deputy General Director of the RBC Group of Companies for Human Resources Management

Since September 2013, he has been RBC's Deputy CEO for Human Resources. He has been working in the IT and media industry for over 15 years. From the beginning of 2011 to July 2013, she implemented the HR strategy of the consolidated company Afisha-Rambler in the position of HR Director. Prior to this, for more than three years she determined the strategy for training and development of employees as the head of personnel training at Yandex. Included in the list of the best HR directors in the Media Business category of the Top 1000 Russian Managers.
Graduated from MTUCI with a degree in software and received a second higher education majoring in Organizational Management.

Timofey Shcherbakov

Legal Director of RBC Group of Companies, General Director of RBC TV Channel

Timofey Shcherbakov has served as Director of Legal Affairs for the RBC Group of Companies since December 2015. Timofey has over 15 years of legal experience in the media business. He has worked in both government and commercial structures, including heading the legal departments of the Profmedia broadcasting corporation, RIA Novosti media holding, supervised legal activity Russian Academy of Radio. He is an expert of working groups in executive and legislative authorities. From August 2016 - CEO RBC channel. He is a member of the presidium of the Foundation for the Promotion of Internet Technologies and Infrastructure Development, ensuring the legal security of the foundation's activities. Ranked second among legal directors in the Media Business category of the Top 1000 Russian Managers rating.
Graduated from the faculty of jurisprudence at Moscow State Technical University. N. E. Bauman.

Andrey Sikorsky

Marketing Director of the RBC Group of Companies

In July 2014, he headed RBC's project marketing department. Prior to that, from July 2010 to March 2014, he worked at RIA Novosti, where he was first Deputy Director of the Marketing and Business Development Directorate, and then, in 2012, headed the Marketing Directorate. From 2010 to 2012 he worked at Usabilitylab. Graduated from Moscow State Technical University "Stankin", studied at the Russian State Humanitarian University, lecturer at Moscow State Technical University "Stankin". Included in the Odgers Berndtson "Rating of young media managers in Russia", ranks second among marketing directors in the Media Business category of the Top 1000 Russian Managers rating.

Igor Dergunov

Deputy General Director for Economics, Finance and Investments

From 1988 to 1990 he worked as an economist at the Ministry of Finance of the USSR. From 1990 to 1996 he worked at Menatep Bank and Most Bank, in 1996 he became an adviser to the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. From 1997 to 1998 he worked as the head of the department of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. From 1999 to 2003 - Deputy Chairman of the Menatep Spb bank. From 2005 to 2011, he served as Chairman of the Management Board of the Maritime Bank.

Graduated from the Faculty of Economic Cybernetics of the Moscow Institute of National Economy (now Plekhanov Russian University of Economics) and postgraduate studies at the Financial Institute under the Government of the Russian Federation. He holds an MBA from Hyward University (California) and an EMBA from Aalto University (Helsinki).

Alexander Zhgut

Deputy General Director of the RBC Group of Companies for Security

Since 2002 he has been leadership positions in state and commercial companies, including the banking and manufacturing sectors of the economy. Participated in the creation of integrated security systems for facilities state importance and large industrial companies, was engaged in the implementation of new projects in the field of informatization, information security and engineering and technical protection within the framework of state programs. Possesses expertise in the field crisis management, diversification of business, control and auditing activities, participated in the creation of a system for monitoring the spending of state budget funds. He was directly involved in the creation of a system of state and municipal procurement in the Russian Federation.

He graduated from two higher military academies and two civilian universities, including the Air Force Engineering Academy named after Professor N.E. Zhukovsky (1995), Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov (2005). Specialist in jurisprudence, economics and business management, has state awards.

Top management of RBC

Ludmila Gurey

Commercial Director of RBC

Holds a corporate position commercial director RBC since January 2014. In 1998, she began her career at Sanoma Independent Media, where she worked her way up from advertising assistant to commercial director of the Cosmopolitan group of publications and corporate director of SIM online sales. Participant of the rating "Top 1000 Russian Managers" in the nomination "Commercial Directors" category "Media Business", included in the rating " business women» Ernst&Young.

Graduated higher school economics with a degree in economics of the firm.

Alexey Abakumov

RBC Development Director

He has been RBC Development Director since 2017. From 1985 to 1991 he worked on foreign broadcasting of the USSR State Television and Radio Broadcasting Service, in the World Broadcasting Service in Russian as an editor and presenter of programs. From 1991 to 1993 - presenter, head of the Voice of Russia radio station, deputy director of the Directorate of Information Programs of Radio Russia. From 1993 to 1997 - Director of the Directorate of Information Programs of Radio Russia. He worked in "hot spots": author and producer of documentaries about the military operations in Yugoslavia (long business trips in the early 90s to all the republics of the former SFRY), the situation in Albania (1991-1995), the war in Libya (2011) and etc. In 1997 he became the Deputy Editor-in-Chief information program Vesti, from 1999 to 2005 was the Deputy General Director of Vesti. From 2005 to 2007 - Deputy General Director of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. Since 2007, he began working at REN-TV as Deputy General Director for Information Broadcasting and Editor-in-Chief of REN-TV. In 2012, he became the Deputy General Director of Rumedia.
Graduated in 1985 from the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov.

Elizaveta Golikova

She began her career as a journalist at Komsomolskaya Pravda in 1996. Since 2001, she worked at Kommersant, where she worked her way up from a correspondent in the finance department to the editor-in-chief of the kommersant.ru website. In 2005, she participated in the launch of the Kommersant-Ukraine project. In 2013, she joined TASS as head of the Internet projects service, editor-in-chief of tass.ru. Responsible for the relaunch of the tass.ru website, led the project to create and maintain official portal for fans of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia welcome2018.com.

Graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov.

Igor Trosnikov

Co-head of the united editorial office of RBC

Since 1992, he worked at Kommersant, held the position of deputy editor-in-chief, headed the business information block of the publishing house, and was responsible for the launch of Kommersant-Ukraine. In 2013, he moved to TASS, where he launched the economic information service, and then reformed the news service. Responsible for the work of six socio-political editions.

Graduated from the Faculty of Geography of Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov.

Valery Igumenov

Editor-in-chief of RBC magazine

He has been the editor-in-chief of RBC magazine since May 2014. He worked as a correspondent, executive editor of the Interfax news agency, correspondent, editor, deputy editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine.

Graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov.

Ilya Doronov

Managing Director of RBC TV channel

He began working on television in 2000 in Vladimir. In 2002, he began working in Moscow as a correspondent and presenter for the VKT television company, and then as a correspondent for REN TV. Since March 2004, he has been a news anchor on REN TV. In 2015, he was appointed Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Life News TV channel. Since December 2016, he has been the presenter of the Russia 24 TV channel. The owner of TEFI as the best presenter of an information program (2012).

Kirill Titov

Director for B2C digital products at RBC

He started his career as a programmer, having worked from 2000 to 2006 at the RusAero Central Aviation Administration, the Kuntsevo Technical Center, and Musa Motors. In 2007, he joined RBC and worked his way up from a project manager to a development director and head of B2C digital products.

Graduated from the Moscow Technological University (MIREA), with a degree in computer technology and automated systems software.

Irina Mitrofanova

Director of RBC Publishing House, Director of RBC Conferences

He has been the director of the RBC publishing house since July 2016. From 1995 to 1998 she worked as a commercial operations manager at ABN AMRO. From 2001 to October 2009 she worked at Independent Media, where she rose from Head of Business Conferences to Director of Business Development at Independent Media Sanoma Magazines. In 2009, she became a member of the board of directors of the Argumenty i Fakty publishing house and a number of companies of the Media 3 holding, worked as the general director of the Argumenty i Fakty publishing house, and director of development for Media 3. Since 2012 - Director for Digital Media and Multimedia Projects of Kommersant Publishing House.

Graduated in 1992 from the Russian State Pedagogical University. A. I. Herzen.

Dmitry Kharitonov

Digital director of B2B direction

Holds the position of digital director business projects RBC since September 2013. Works in the field of Internet technologies since 1999. From 2008 to 2013, he worked at Rambler (later the merged company Afisha-Rambler) as the head of the Infrastructure department, was engaged in the development of advertising technologies and data mining technologies, as well as the implementation of an analytics system.

Graduated from the radio-electronic faculty of the Oryol State Technical University.

Maxim Vasyukov

Deputy General Director of RBC

He has been Deputy General Director in the B2C segment since January 2017. He started his career as a journalist at Delovoy Peterburg, went from reporter to editor-in-chief and general director of DP.

Graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of St. Petersburg State University in 2005.

Top management of RU-CENTER group of companies

Andrey Kuzmichev

Deputy General Director for Products RU-CENTER

He has been Deputy General Director for Products of RU-CENTER Group since July 2014. From 2008 to 2011, Andrey worked at Yandex, where he held various positions in the development department. From August 2011 to September 2013, Andrey was responsible for the quality of products in the United Company of Afisha and Rambler. And from September 2013 to December 2014 - for the operational management of RBC entertainment products. Member of the "Rating of young media managers of Russia" Odgers Berndtson.

Graduated with honors from Moscow State Technical University. Bauman.

Anton Terekhov

Commercial Director of RU-CENTER

He holds the position of commercial director of the group of companies

RU-CENTER since 2015. He started his career in RuNet in 1997 as an editor of the Internet marketing section of the InfoBusiness project of the Computerra publishing house. From 2001 to 2005 held the position of Marketing and Sales Director of the leading Russian web developer ADV / web-engineering co. In the period from 2006-2008 - Marketing Director of the online store OZON.ru. In 2009, Anton moved to TUI Russia and CIS, where he held the position of E-commerce director until 2011. Since 2010, he has been the CEO of SHOPOLOG. In 2011-2013 he worked as director of e-commerce at Rambler and CEO of Begun, Price.ru and Ichiba. From 2013 to 2015 he was a partner investment fund target global.

Graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University and received an MBA degree from the Academy of National Economy under the Government of the Russian Federation, specializing in marketing.

Evgeny Svetikov

Director of Hosting Products Department RU-CENTER

He started his career as a system administrator in 2003. In 2005-2008 - engineer of the physical laboratory of the Kurchatov Institute. From 2007 to 2016 - CTO and Development Director of the Agava hosting provider. Since 2016, he has been working at RU-CENTER as the director of the hosting products department.

Graduated from the Institute of Nano-, Bio-, Information, Cognitive and Socio-Humanitarian Sciences of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

Andrey Proshletsov

Head of Hosting and Development at RU-CENTER

Joined the RU-CENTER team in 2015. From 2005 to 2006, he worked at Ipsos Central Eastern Europe as a specialist in the data analysis and processing department. From 2066 to 2008 - marketer, and later Executive Director"Information for Industry" company. In 2008-2015 - General Director of Artektiv.

Graduated from Moscow State Technical University "Stankin" with a degree in Marketing Management enterprise"

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RBC(from "RosBusinessConsulting" listen)) is a Russian media holding, including a TV channel of the same name, a news agency, a newspaper and a magazine. Holds industry conferences, business regattas and awards. It is the largest non-state media holding in Russia. The headquarters is located in Moscow.

History

Over its more than twenty-year history, RBC has grown from a small news agency into a diversified company operating in the IT, television and press segments.

Since the early 2000s, the RBC website has been one of the most visited information resources on the Russian Internet (and according to many competitors, it is also one of the leaders in “purchased traffic”). For several years in a row, the company's declared sales of online advertising were many times higher than the sales of other major advertising platforms, including Internet giants like Yandex, Mail.ru, Rambler and others, it was noted in an investigation by SmartMoney magazine published in 2006.

In 2002, RBC was the first among media holdings to place its shares on Russian stock exchanges. By 2008, their price had grown more than tenfold, the company itself was estimated by its management at one and a half billion dollars.

Change of ownership

In July 2009, RBC shareholders agreed with Mikhail Prokhorov's Onexim group to purchase the last additional issue of 51% of the company's shares for $80 million, half of which will go to cover debts. The issue of the withdrawal of assets is considered in court. The total debt of RBC at the end of August 2009 was estimated by the company's creditors at $207 million. In June 2010, the deal was completed: ONEXIM bought out an additional issue of RBC TV Moscow, which controls most of RBC's assets, for $80 million.

Further history (2010-2015)

In late 2013, after unsuccessful purchase negotiations Russian edition Forbes was transferred to RBC by a number of its employees: editor-in-chief Elizaveta Osetinskaya, her deputy Valery Igumenov (headed the RBC magazine), editor Elena Tofanyuk, columnist Irina Malkova and several correspondents, in order to improve the quality of materials, employees of other publications were bought up. Elizaveta Osetinskaya, as the editor-in-chief of RBC, took up the unification of the editorial offices of the magazine, website, newspaper and TV channel. Subsequently, cost optimization began, during which the staff was reduced from 2000 to 1100 employees, non-core assets were sold ( Publishing House Salon-Press, which published glossy magazines).

By 2014, the RBC website became one of the leaders in citation according to Medialogy (in the spring its audience reached 20 million unique visitors per month), the RBC newspaper in September 2015 became the leader in terms of audience in the segment of daily business publications.

By 2015, the total sales of the holding reached a little more than five billion rubles, the EBITDA of the group of companies reached 426 million rubles. Nevertheless, the group's net loss amounted to 1.58 billion rubles, long-term debt rose to 17 billion rubles ($263 million).

Dismissal of chief editors

In April 2016, a number of media outlets linked searches in the office of the Onexim group and the vacation of the editor-in-chief of the RBC holding, Elizaveta Osetinskaya, with pressure from the Kremlin on Mikhail Prokhorov due to publications about the alleged daughter and son-in-law of Vladimir Putin Ekaterina Tikhonova and Kirill Shamalov, as well as about Panamanian archive. The press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov stated that the authorities are not trying to put pressure on the editorial policy of the holding.

On May 11, it became known about the investigation of the fraud case at RBC, the defendants of which could be the holding's CEO Nikolai Molibog and a group of his subordinates.

On May 13, 2016, the holding lost its editorial management: Maxim Solius, editor-in-chief of the RBC newspaper, was fired, and by agreement of the parties, the holding's editor-in-chief Elizaveta Osetinskaya and the news agency's editor-in-chief Roman Badanin resigned. Nikolai Molibog explained the dismissals as "disagreements on some important issues." Journalists and editors of RBC were obliged to coordinate the texts before publication with the general director of the holding. Following the leaders, many editors and journalists planned to leave the publication; others decided to work "until the first note taken" .

Commenting on the dismissals, Alexei Volin, Deputy Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications, said that “the owner of RBC had every reason to be dissatisfied ... [since] his managers generated losses, not profits” and that “it’s completely pointless to look for politics where there is purely economics” . Osetinskaya denied this version, noting: Chief editors are not engaged in business, they manage the editorial office .

New leadership

On July 7, the newspaper Vedomosti, citing an internal letter, announced the appointment of Elizaveta Golikova and Igor Trosnikov as "heads of the joint editorial office", with a start date of July 14 indicated. Both new leaders have worked as editors of the newspaper Kommersant in the past, and until recently worked for the state news agency TASS.

On the evening of July 7, 2016, Elizaveta Golikova and Igor Trosnikov, together with Nikolai Molibog, met with the editors of the publication and the website to discuss the future information policy of the holding. The text transcript of the meeting was published on the website of the Meduza online publication, which received an audio recording from one of the participants in the meeting.

During the conversation, the new leaders announced the presence of certain restrictions, embodied in double solid, an example of the intersection of which Molibog and Trosnikov called RBC's coverage of the Panama Archive against the backdrop of Vedomosti and Kommersant. Also, RBC journalists were urged not to apply for resignation, because this wrong attitude neither to what you have done, nor to the company, nor to the shareholders. When asked about the possibility of publishing materials about Ekaterina Tikhonova in the future, Trosnikov refused to answer. Top managers called their main goal the preservation of indicators, respect for the audience, and unlocking potential.

In early July, the RBC magazine ceased to be part of the holding's unified editorial office, coming under the control of Molibog. The staff of the media and telecom department of the united editorial office moved to the magazine in its entirety. The editor-in-chief of the journal asked not to associate the rearrangements with the change of editorial board.

From May to July 2016, 20 journalists left the holding, including eight out of 10 deputy chief editors, four out of 12 heads of areas, services and department editors, one out of four special correspondents. The departments of politics, industry and energy resources, the Internet edition service, in turn, no one left. On August 18, Deputy Editor-in-Chief and Head of the Internet Edition Service Vladimir Motorin announced his resignation. In August-October 2016, most of the journalists who left RBC's print media began working on the Dozhd TV channel, which led to a split within its editorial office.

Under the new leadership, RBC began to publish fewer investigations; there were no longer any own texts about the Putin family. In terms of audience size, the holding competed with the largest state media (in March 2017, the websites of RBC and RIA Novosti were visited by 26.5 and 27.4 million people) [ ] . The media reported dissatisfaction with the editorial policy of the publication on the eve of the presidential elections in the presidential administration, in particular - with Alexei Gromov).

New owner (2017 - present)

According to the BBC Russian Service, the decision to sell the holding to Prokhorov was made under pressure from the presidential administration. Also, according to media reports, Beryozkin was dissatisfied with the excessive politicization of his new asset, planning to concentrate his work on covering business processes.

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Mission

media

The RBC media holding includes the Rosbusinessconsulting information agency, an Internet news portal, the business analytical portal Quote.rbc.ru, since 2003 the publication of the daily analytical newspaper RBC began (until 2014 - RBC daily); is published both in printed and online versions) and the monthly business magazine RBC, the business television channel RBC-TV (established in 2003), the high-tech magazine CNews, a project for the sale of finished marketing information RBC. Market research”, automotive portal “Autonews.ru”, portal about alcoholic beverages"Drinktime.rbc.ru" and a number of other online business, information, service and entertainment publications.

At the beginning of October 2007, RBC. Information Systems"Bought 89.99% of the shares of the Our Money magazine from KIT Finance and 100% of the shares of the weekly newspaper M² - Square Meter from ID Rodionov.

In December 2014, the media holding entered the media monitoring and analytics market by purchasing the specialized Internet service Public.ru.

IT

Another major area of ​​RBC's activity is domain registration and hosting, which open up wide opportunities for customers to do business on the Internet.

Within the framework of the holding, a division "RBC-soft" was created, specializing in the development of software (SW). In 2007, it was transformed into the Armada company.

The RBC group of companies includes the largest in Russia and Eastern Europe community of hosting providers and domain name registrars "Ru-Center Group" . Currently, "Ru-Center Group" includes seven key operating companies: recorders "R01", "

Image copyright Prokofiev Vyacheslav/TASS Image caption Igor Poletaev at the premiere of the series "Hunting the Devil" in February 2017

NTV presenter Igor Poletaev, who headed the editorial office of the business broadcasting of the television company, became the managing director of the RBC television channel, taking the place of Elmar Murtazaev, who resigned the day before. The BBC Russian service asked former colleagues what kind of person this was.

Poletaev was not previously named to RBC employees as a possible new head of the TV channel. His name was first announced to them on Friday morning.

For Poletaev himself, this is not the first experience of working at RBC: it was here in 2000 that he started professional career- first in the news agency, and then on the TV channel.

"Immersed in the topic for three years as a reporter (and then as an editor), I decided to try to realize my old dream - to become a TV news anchor," Poletaev's profile on the NTV website says.

"On September 2, 2003, the first live broadcast of RBC-TV took place. It was also my first day on the air of the information service, which can be described in one word - delight!" he recalled.

Poletaev began working at NTV in 2006. He came there as a business news anchor, and later became one of the presenters of the news program "Today".

Dozhd TV host Pavel Lobkov, who left NTV in 2011, speaks of Poletaev as "always correct" and "very neat, tidy" colleague.

"[Poletaev] gave the impression of a broker or a bank trader who suddenly went to television to work," Lobkov said.

According to one of Poletaev’s former colleagues at NTV, he owes his career success in the first years of his work to Tatyana Mitkova, who in 2014 became the deputy general director and head of the channel’s information broadcasting directorate.

The BBC interlocutor was skeptical about Poletaev's abilities as a leader. Andrey Shilyaev, the former host of the RBC TV channel, did not agree with this assessment: "Igor Poletaev is a smart, experienced person, he has been cooking in the television kitchen for a very long time."

"The work of a manager is not some kind of special profession or special education, it is a job for a person with common sense," Shilyaev said.

Shilyaev calls his former colleague "on the one hand a maestro, on the other a mathematician." "This is the person who can bring some music, revive the RBC channel, which in last years was in search," the former host of the channel added.

NTV Editor-in-Chief Alexandra Kosterina called Poletaev a professional and wished him success in his position as head of the RBC television channel.

Who was before Poletaev

The fact that this post has become vacant, it became known yesterday. On Thursday, Elmar Murtazaev, who has been managing director of the RBC channel since 2016, announced his resignation. And on Friday edition Meduza reported that many leading employees of the TV channel would allegedly leave after him.

So far, no one has written a letter of resignation, several employees of the channel, who wished to remain anonymous, told the BBC Russian Service. We are talking about planned holidays, the press service of RBC said.

Stories of the Day and Prime Time staff are going on paid leave until October. "We really slightly increased the planned summer holidays for RBC TV employees," Nikolay Molibog, general director of the RBC holding, confirmed to Vedomosti.

That part of the channel’s team that came with Murtazaev is going on a long vacation: former Forbes.ru editor-in-chief Alexander Bogomolov (Murtazaev was previously the editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, ex-employees of the Central Television program on NTV Alexander Urzhanov and Igor Sadreev (both came to RBC at the end of 2016), host Stanislav Kucher (he has been broadcasting special broadcasts on RBC since 2017), former editor of the "Finance" department of the RBC edition Elena Tofanyuk, correspondents Roman Super and Rodion Chepel.

In June, the RBC holding changed its owner - now it belongs to the owner of the ESN group, Grigory Berezkin. He has not yet met with the team and did not tell them about his plans to develop the channel, two employees of the holding told the BBC Russian Service. But for Murtazaev and RBC employees it was obvious that the new owner would not leave the old team on the channel.

Paid leave for three months is a kind of "parachute" for employees, two employees of the RBC TV channel say. Murtazaev had long ago made it clear to his employees that he would not remain working under the new owner, and that, most likely, the management of the TV channel would change. Until new plans are announced, employees are encouraged to go on vacation.

None specific plans no one has announced a change in the channel's editorial policy, but the employees are confident that television will show less political news.

Mikhail Prokhorov's ONEXIM Group sold RBC media holding. The transaction is completed, the ESN group bought back 65% of the shares and debt obligations of RBC from the ONEXIM group, according to a press release from the ESN. VTB Capital acted as a consultant on the transaction.

“RBC is now one of the leading media holdings in Russia, and we see great potential for its development in terms of different directions Grigory Berezkin, Chairman of the Board of Directors of ESN, commented on the deal.

It was not possible to take a comment from Grigory Berezkin. The head of the RBC media holding, Nikolay Molibog, declined to comment, referring to the RBC press release: “Today we see RBC’s goal not only to strengthen the holding’s leading position, but also to take on the challenges facing the media and IT industries in advent of the era of the digital economy. We are confident that relations with the ESN group, built on mutual respect, will allow us to jointly realize these opportunities to the fullest.”

At the end of May, the FAS allowed the ESN structure to buy 65.43% of the voting shares of PJSC RBC, as well as 80.4% of the shares of RBC Online.

The deal was supposed to close on June 15th. However, as Grigory Berezkin said on Thursday, "the miracle did not happen, the deal has not yet been closed."

Mikhail Prokhorov and Grigory Berezkin are on the list of 200 richest businessmen. Grigory Berezkin controls the ESN group, which includes two oil terminals, half of the shares in the energy trader Rusenergosbyt and a controlling stake in Rusenergoresurs. The group also controls Komsomolskaya Pravda publishing house, RZD-Partner publishing house and Metro newspaper.

The RBC media holding includes a TV channel of the same name, a news website, a newspaper, a magazine, and an online high-tech publication, CNews. RBC also has a business of Internet hosting and domain registration, conferences. According to LiveInternet, the holding's monthly audience is 26 million users.

The sale of RBC has been actively discussed since last spring. According to a Gazeta.Ru source in power circles, a photograph of Vladimir Putin to an article about Panamanian offshores published in the RBC newspaper caused an extremely negative reaction. After the publication in April last year, the FSB and the Federal Tax Service conducted searches and seized documents at the head office of ONEXIM and its controlled companies in connection with "possible tax evasion." Then it became known that Mikhail Prokhorov was selling his assets. As a result, the team of media managers changed in the holding. Igor Trosnikov and Elizaveta Golikova, who were deputy chief editors of the TASS agency, were called to lead the publication, and before that they had worked for many years at the Kommersant publishing house.

In April of this year, it became known about the resumption of negotiations on the sale of RBC. The vc.ru website wrote that the sale of Prokhorov's holding was forced by "powerful pressure" from the deputy head of the Russian presidential administration Alexei Gromov, who allegedly considered RBC's publications about protest rallies and a note about changing the agenda of federal television channels a "personal insult".

On the eve of the deal, even President Vladimir Putin had to justify himself. During a "straight line" on June 15, he stated that he had not discussed the sale of RBC with Mikhail Prokhorov.

“I believe that such means mass media, like RBC, are needed, sometimes even, to be honest, I look myself. And the information package that I see on the screens, in principle, I consider it useful, I like it. But some kind of pressure - in any case, I don’t know anything about it, ”the president said during the direct line.

Grigory Berezkin, the owner of the ESN, said earlier that he intends to finance the potential acquisition of the ESN from own funds and will represent only their own interests in negotiations.

The parties have not yet disclosed the amount of the transaction. The press release said that this was agreed between the seller and the buyer. Considering that RBC is a public company with a capitalization of 2.7 billion rubles, 65.43% of the holding could be valued at about 1.8 billion rubles. However, the company has large debts. The total debt is about $230 million, of which RBC owes $200 million to ONEXIM. For a long time, the assessment of the debt did not allow the parties to agree on the amount of the transaction. In particular, the signing was delayed, since the parties were bargaining to the last on issues related to who would be financially responsible if Rosneft still manages to sue RBC 3.2 billion rubles. for causing damage business reputation. Although the court denied Rosneft, the company filed a complaint with a higher authority.

According to Forbes, ONEXIM was ready to sell this debt at a coefficient of 0.5 to par, that is, for $100 million, while Berezkin's structures estimated the debt at a coefficient of 0.2 to par, that is, at $40 million.

Timur Nigmatullin from Finam Investment Company previously told Gazeta.Ru that the discount is too high and may be due to the fact that "the buyer doubts RBC's operating performance."

“RBC is an asset with a well-known reputation and an audience that is used to quality. She, of course, would like RBC to be preserved in the form in which it is now operating. The new RBC will need to win over its audience,” said Alexei Makarkin, First Vice President of the Center for Political Technologies.

At the same time, the expert does not exclude that under the new owner, the holding will not only change its media policy, but also personnel editions.

However, in a letter to RBC employees, cited by the RNS agency, Nikolai Molibog expresses confidence that Grigory Berezkin shares the fundamental principles of RBC's work. “The question that worries many is what impact the change of ownership will have on RBC's media assets. In my opinion, the key value of our media brand is to work professionally and make high-quality information and analytical media. Thanks to this approach, we daily confirm RBC's status as the main supplier of quality content for the economically active part of the population. This is a big part of RBC's success as a business, and I am sure that the new shareholder shares this point of view,” Molibog wrote.