International investment group LetterOne (L1) has just announced that it has made a “strategic investment”of $200 million in Uber. Mikhail Fridman, the chairman of the group, is the third Russian billionaire in a row to invest in the US company, following the moves of Ziyavudin Magomedov and Alisher Usmanov last year.
“I’m excited by our strategic partnership with Uber. As entrepreneurs, with experience in retail, banking, telecoms and energy sectors, and knowledge of diverse developed and emerging markets, we believe that Uber’s highly talented management team possesses the necessary vision and skills to build the company into one of the world’s preeminent technology businesses,” Fridman stated.
“L1’s knowledge of emerging markets will be crucial in helping us make cities more accessible, opening up more possibilities for riders and more opportunities for drivers,” said Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick.
The US startup, which arrived in Russia in 2013, currently operates in seven cities across the country. While visiting Moscow in December 2015, its Vice President Ryan Graves shared plans to expand Uber’s coverage to 10 new cities this year.
A few months earlier, Uber signed a memorandum of understanding with Sberbank, Russia’s national savings bank, “to explore the co-development of financial technologies with global potential.”
From bank, to oil, to technology
Fridman was born in 1964 in Lvov (Lviv), Ukraine, which was, at that time, a part of the Soviet Union. After graduating from the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys, he began his entrepreneurial activities in the early days of Russian liberal reforms. In 1989, together with college buddies German Khan and Alexei Kuzmichev, he founded Alfa Group, which later became a leading financial and industrial investment group in Russia.
In 2013, with billionaire partners Viktor Vekselberg and Leonard Blavatnik — who also invest in technology — he sold a 50% stake in joint oil venture TNK-BP to state-owned oil company Rosneft for $28 billion. Fridman got $5.1 billion in the deal, according to Forbes, which estimates his current net worth at $13.2 billion.
Fridman is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations (USA) and the Board of Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. He has Russian and Israeli citizenships.
L1’s assets under management amount to approximately $25 billion (as of December 31, 2014), with portfolio companies operating in 32 countries. The sources of these assets are funds from the sale of TNK-BP as well as from assets invested prior to L1’s formation — including VimpelCom, Turkcell and private equity investments.
The group invests in the energy and technology sectors, as well as in treasury equity. L1 also is a passive investor in private equity funds managed independently by Pamplona Capital Management.
