Yesterday Sberbank, the state-controlled financial giant, announced it completed the acquisition of a 46.5% stake in Rambler Group, a major online media and entertainment group. The deal, which was approved by the antimonopoly authorities, has given Sberbank equal stake to investment holding company A&NN, while Era Capital owns the remaining 7%. A&NN is affiliated to Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed but, when the parties agreed it in April this year, the Russian media reported that around 11 billion rubles ($170 million at the current exchange rate) would be injected by Sberbank in Rambler in exchange for acquiring the stake.
The funding will be used “to develop Rambler Group’s digital assets and technological platform,” Sberbank stated.
A variety of online resources
Rambler Group owns a variety of online resources, including the online video site Okko, the web portal Rambler.ru, several online news and content services, and an online travel service. Its total audience reaches 56 million monthly users, according to Sberbank.
Joint projects and synergies have already been put in place between the two groups. For example, Okko users are offered a privileged access to Sberbank’s banking services and loyalty program Spasibo.
Even before this acquisition, in October 2018, Rambler joined forces with Sberbank and UCS to create a multifunction food service platform.
Sberbank aims to create a series of “ecosystems,” involving itself in such fields as e-commerce, food services, digital healthcare, digital HR, CRM and neuroscience, to name just examples.
