JP Morgan and Russian business daily Vedomosti revealed the detailed shareloder structure of Vkontakte.ru this week.
According to JP Morgan, 12% is owned by Vkontakte founder’s Pavel Durov, 8% by his partner Lev Leviev, and 40% by Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and members of his family. Mail.ru Group owns a 39,99% stake, having acquired 7.44% from Pavel Durov and other shareholders last month for $111.7 million.
Sources close to the shareholders reported a slightly different structure to Vedomosti. In that scenario, Vyacheslav Mirilashvili would hold all the shares of his family, amounting to 42%, and Leviev would have just a 6% stake.
In 2007, when Vkontakte was incorporated, Vyacheslav Mirilashvili held 60%, his grandfather Mikhail 10%, Leviev 10% and Durov 20%, according to the Russian Companies Registry, Vedomosti reports.
Based on data from the Russian company database Spark, Vedomosti also reported last month that Vkontakte’s revenues reached 2.3 billion rubles, or $82 million, in 2010, more than twice the 2009 figure. The company’s net profit reached 453 million rubles, or $16.2 million, up 22.7% from 2009.
Vkontakte is the leading Russian social network with a total of 35.2 million Russian users last May, according to ComScore. But the influence of Vkontakte, which offers versions in more than 60 languages, is not limited to Russia. The website has opened over 125 million accounts worldwide and claims to generate more than half of the Internet traffic in Russia and the other former Soviet republics of the CIS.
Mail.ru Group owns controlling stakes in two other Russian language social networks, MoiMir and Odnoklassniki.ru.
Source: Vedomosti
