The ink is not yet “dry” on Vladimir Potanin’s deal to buy Rosbank from the French Societe Generale, as today comes another news about his purchase of Tinkoff Bank.
On Thursday, Potanin’s Interros announced that it had purchased 35% of TCS Group, which owns 100% of Tinkoff Group, from Oleg Tinkov’s family trust. According to the media, the deal has already been approved by the Central Bank. Details, and moreover, the amount of the deal are not disclosed. It is also difficult to guess the range of the purchase.
Interros President Vladimir Potanin. Photo: Yandex
In 2020, there was information about a preliminary agreement to sell 100% of the shares to Yandex for $5.5 billion. But the deal did not happen – the parties could not agree on the management of the asset after the sale. “Yandex wanted full operational control, while Oleg Yurievich was not ready to give up the management.
At the moment, it is extremely difficult to establish a fair price. After the March stock exchange crash, the price of TCS receipts “froze” at $3.2, which equals a capitalization of $636 million, although a couple of weeks before that they were worth $80, which corresponds to the value of the company of almost $16 billion.
At
current prices on the Moscow Stock Exchange, TCS is worth about $7 billion
. That
is, a 35% stake can be valued at $2.4 bln. All the while, according to Kommersant, just last week Tinkoff’s trusted representatives were looking for a buyer for only $300 mln.
One thing is clear – now we can stop guessing what new name Tinkoff Bank will get. Another purchase in the Russian M&A market we wrote about in this afternoon’s review. VK Company agreed to acquire Yandex.Zen and Yandex.News.
