United Capital Partners, the Russia focused investment fund, has purchased 48% of shareholdings of VKontakte, the top social network in Russia. With the sale, the fund becomes the largest shareholder in the company.
The purchase by UCP was done with the shares of the co-founders of VKontakte, Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev. This was confirmed by a VKontakte spokeswoman with Reuters but she did not elaborate on the financial details of the transaction.
VKontakte is the Russian equivalent of Facebook. 39.9% of the company is owned by the Russian Internet group Mail.Ru, who has long been vocal about increasing its shareholdings in order to gain control of the network which has a population of more than 100 million.
Back in 2012, Mail.Ru had given VKontakte CEO Pavel Durov voting rights to its shareholdings. In addition Durov's personal 12% shareholdings, this created effective majority control but still the group wanted a larger stake,
Part of Mail.Ru's shareholdings is owned by the richest man in Russia, Alisher Usmanov through USM Advisors. Both companies declined to comment. Similarly, Durov declined to make any comment on the UCP deal.
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