Mail.ru Group, an LSE-listed Russian Internet group partly owned by Russian billionnaire Alsiher Usmanov, may consider selling its 40% stake in VKontakte (VK.com), Russia’s most popular social network.
This possibility was discussed earlier this week by Ivan Streshinskiy, chief executive officer of the company that manages Usmanov’s assets, USM Advisors LLC, in an interview with Bloomberg in New York.
“This social network can be only successful when it’s run by the young energetic founder Pavel Durov,” Bloomberg quoted Streshinskiy as saying. “Boosting the stake and pushing Pavel to be part of a corporation such as Mail.ru may be counter-productive.”
The Mail.ru Group already controls two large Russian language social network, Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir, each with more users than Facebook has in the country.
Last year, Mail.ru Group general manager Dmitry Grishin expressed interest in taking control of Vkontakte “or, even better, to acquire all of its shares.”
But Vkontakte.ru general manager and shareholder Pavel Durov then ruled out such a possibility, characterizing it as “utopian.”
Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev, who provided funds to Durov to start VKontakte, have no plans to sell their combined 48 percent stake, Leviev said in October, according to Bloomberg.
VKontakte was valued at $1.5 billion based on Mail.ru’s purchase of 7.44 percent of the company for $112 million last year.
