Prominent Russian businessman Alisher Usmanov told Bloomberg that his $500 million acquisition of a 5% stake in Chinese Web retailer 360buy.com in March may have been his last big direct Web investment for some time.
In a phone interview with the financial news agency last Friday, Usmanov said, “Investments in Internet companies start to bring less profits compared with two or three years ago, when we began to invest in them almost at a startup level.”
Usmanov is the main backer of DST Global, Russia’s leading Internet investment fund, and an important shareholder of Mail.ru Group.
Usmanov thus indirectly owns shares in such international websites as Facebook, Groupon, Zynga, and Spotify, as well as in leading Russian websites.
With Facebook valued at around $50 billion and Twitter at up to $10 billion before turning a profit, there is concern about the risk of a bubble with Internet companies.
Analysts at Uralsib Capital have said that Mail.ru Group itself, which was introduced on the London Stock Exchange last October, is overvalued, too.
Kirill Gorsky, chief editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, regarded Usmanov’s statement cautiously, however.
Speaking to Russian TV channel Dozhd, Gorsky said, “I don’t want to give in to conspiracy theories, but a couple of years ago, [Usmanov’s partner] Yury Milner said that ‘any of [his] statements about an Internet asset automatically leads to an increase in its acquisition price for [him].’ Perhaps the group is currently preparing some new acquisitions, and Mr. Usmanov’s statement today about stopping acquisitions in the near future is purely tactical.”
DST owners have launched a second fund, DST Global II, with a majority of Western subscribers, reported East-West Digital News recently.
