Khodynskoye Pole is one of the most chaotically built-up areas of Moscow, which...
The deal to sell the RBC media holding has been closed, the asset has passed from Mikhail Prokhorov to Grigory Berezkin. Earlier it was reported that RBC is planned to merge with Komsomolskaya Pravda into a single holding.
Marianna Belousova, a representative of the Unified Social Tax of Grigory Berezkin, informed Kommersant that the deal was closed. She does not disclose details. It has not yet been possible to contact representatives of ONEXIM.
The main subject of negotiations between Mr. Berezkin’s structures and ONEXIM was the settlement of RBC’s debt, estimated, according to the company’s latest financial statements, at approximately $277 million. Marianna Belousova did not say how this issue was resolved.
Grigory Berezkin's Unified Social Tax, part of the group, bought 65.43% of the voting shares of RBC PJSC and 80.463% of the authorized capital of RBC Online LLC. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) gave permission for the deal in May. Mr. Berezkin announced plans to create a single media holding in the event of the purchase of RBC. “There are different audiences everywhere, there is a lot of synergy between them, it will, of course, be a single holding company. There we will make maximum use of all the synergy that is in this business,” RNS reported the words of Mr. Berezkin. We are talking about synergy at the corporate level, and not about merging editorial offices, the businessman’s representative clarified. Editor-in-Chief of Komsomolskaya Pravda Vladimir Sungorkin supports such an association.
RBC shares are traded on the Moscow Exchange, capitalization on June 16 in the middle of the day was 2.63 billion rubles.
Mr. Berezkin's main business is concentrated in the electric power and oil industries. The unified social network owns 50.5% of the shares of Rusenergosbyt LLC (the remaining stake is held by the Italian energy concern ENEL), which supplies electricity to Russian Railways, KamAZ and the Gas group. His other company, Rusenergoresurs (75% from the Unified Social Network), supplies electricity to Transneft. The group owns two oil terminals. Mr. Berezkin owns the telecommunications company Rusenergotelecom (75%) and has also invested in the development of the Sailfish operating system. It is believed that Grigory Berezkin maintains friendly relations with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, whom he met in the early 2000s, in his own words, “at work.”
Grigory Berezkin owns several print media. Since 2008, he has been developing the Moscow newspaper Metro, and since 2007 he has been the largest shareholder of the Komsomolskaya Pravda Publishing House. A Kommersant source familiar with Mr. Berezkin claims that he has not managed Komsomolskaya Pravda for more than a year and now the newspaper is controlled by the heir of St. Petersburg businessman Oleg Rudnov, Sergei, who is associated in the media market with businessman Yuri Kovalchuk. Two minority shareholders of Komsomolskaya Pravda, as follows from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, are Vitaly Krivenko and Sergei Orlov. Mr. Krivenko worked at the Mikhailov and Partners agency, and then at Russian Railways, like Mr. Orlov. They also own the publishing house RZD-Partner, which ESN sold in 2015.
A Kommersant source close to the deal clarifies that the option of transferring RBC to a common structure with Komsomolskaya Pravda was discussed.
Kommersant's sources also say that the new owner does not plan to change the editorial directors Elizaveta Golikova and Igor Trosnikov. They have been running the editorial office for about a year, after the departure of their predecessors - Elizaveta Osetinskaya, Roman Badanin and Maxim Solyus. As RBC employees said then, they left the publication due to pressure from officials, which intensified after the publication of investigations concerning the president’s family and people from his circle.
In addition to the current managers at RBC, Alexey Abakumov may go to work, Kommersant’s interlocutors previously told. He currently holds the post of deputy general director of the Rumedia group, which operates the Business FM and Shokolad radio stations, and previously worked at REN TV and Radio Russia.
At the end of last year, RBC received revenue of 5.58 billion rubles, EBITDA - 875 million rubles. The holding's total audience is estimated at 23 million people.
Anna Afanasyeva
How key editors left RBC
In May 2016, the RBC media holding announced the resignation of its editorial leaders - the holding's editor-in-chief Elizaveta Osetinskaya, the news agency's editor-in-chief Roman Badanin, and the newspaper's editor-in-chief Maxim Solyus. According to the official version, the separation occurred due to the lack of “a common opinion on important issues.” The employees themselves who left the holding then linked the situation with RBC’s editorial policy.
Mikhail Prokhorov's ONEXIM group sold the media holding. The transaction is completed, the Unified National Social Network group purchased 65% of the shares and debt obligations of RBC from the ONEXIM group, the Unified National Social Network press release notes. Acted as a consultant on the transaction.
“RBC is now one of the leading media holdings in Russia, and we see great potential for its development in various areas,” commented Grigory Berezkin, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the ESN, commenting on the deal.
The RBC media holding includes a TV channel of the same name, a news website, a newspaper, a magazine and an online publication about high technologies. RBC also has a business in Internet hosting and domain registration, and holding conferences. According to LiveInternet, the holding's monthly audience is 26 million users.
The sale of RBC has been actively discussed since last spring. As a Gazeta.Ru source in government circles said, an extremely negative reaction was caused by Vladimir Putin’s photograph for an article about Panamanian offshore companies published in the RBC newspaper. After the publication in April last year, searches and seizure of documents were carried out at the head office of ONEXIM and companies controlled by it in connection with “possible tax evasion.” At the same time it became known that Mikhail Prokhorov was selling his assets. As a result, the holding’s team of media managers changed. Igor Trosnikov and Elizaveta Golikova, who were deputy editors-in-chief and had previously worked for many years at .
In April of this year, it became known that negotiations on the sale of RBC had been resumed. The website vc.ru wrote that the sale of Prokhorov’s holding was forced by “powerful pressure” from the deputy head, who allegedly considered RBC’s publications about protest rallies and a note about a change in the agenda of federal television channels a “personal insult.”
On the eve of the deal, even the president was forced to make excuses. During the “direct line” on June 15, he stated that he had not discussed the sale of RBC with Mikhail Prokhorov.
“I believe that media outlets like RBC are necessary; sometimes, to be honest, I even watch them myself. And the information package that I see on the screens, in principle, I consider useful, I like it. But some kind of pressure - in any case, I don’t know anything about it,” the president said during the “direct line”.
The owner of the UST, Grigory Berezkin, stated earlier that he intends to finance the potential acquisition of the UST from his own funds and will represent only his own interests in the negotiations.
The parties have not yet disclosed the amount of the transaction. The press release states that this was agreed upon between the seller and the buyer. Considering that RBC is a public company with a capitalization of 2.7 billion rubles, 65.43% of the holding could be valued at about 1.8 billion rubles. However, the company has large debts. The total debt is about $230 million, of which RBC owes $200 million to ONEXIM. For a long time, the debt assessment did not allow the parties to agree on the amount of the transaction. In particular, the signing was delayed because the parties bargained until the last minute on issues related to who would bear financial responsibility if Rosneft managed to win 3.2 billion rubles from RBC. for damage to business reputation. Although the court refused, the company filed a complaint to a higher authority.
At the same time, the expert does not rule out that under the new owner the holding will see a change not only in media policy, but also in the staffing of the publication.
However, in a letter to RBC employees, cited by the RNS agency, Nikolai Molibog expresses confidence that Grigory Berezkin shares the fundamental principles of RBC’s work. “The question that worries many is what impact the change of ownership will have on RBC’s media assets. In my opinion, the key value of our media brand is to work professionally and produce high-quality information and analytical media. Thanks to this approach, we daily confirm RBC’s status as the main supplier of quality content for the economically active part of the population. This is a large part of the success of RBC as a business, and I am confident that the new shareholder shares this point of view,” Molibog wrote.
The deal to sell the RBC media holding has been closed, the asset has passed from Mikhail Prokhorov to Grigory Berezkin. Earlier it was reported that RBC is planned to merge with Komsomolskaya Pravda into a single holding.
Marianna Belousova, a representative of the Unified Social Tax of Grigory Berezkin, informed Kommersant that the deal was closed. She does not disclose details. It has not yet been possible to contact representatives of ONEXIM.
The main subject of negotiations between Mr. Berezkin’s structures and ONEXIM was the settlement of RBC’s debt, estimated, according to the company’s latest financial statements, at approximately $277 million. Marianna Belousova did not say how this issue was resolved.
Grigory Berezkin's Unified Social Tax, part of the group, bought 65.43% of the voting shares of RBC PJSC and 80.463% of the authorized capital of RBC Online LLC. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) gave permission for the deal in May. Mr. Berezkin announced plans to create a single media holding in the event of the purchase of RBC. “There are different audiences everywhere, there is a lot of synergy between them, it will, of course, be a single holding company. There we will make maximum use of all the synergy that is in this business,” RNS reported the words of Mr. Berezkin. We are talking about synergy at the corporate level, and not about merging editorial offices, the businessman’s representative clarified. Editor-in-Chief of Komsomolskaya Pravda Vladimir Sungorkin supports such an association.
Mr. Berezkin's main business is concentrated in the electric power and oil industries. The unified social network owns 50.5% of the shares of Rusenergosbyt LLC (the remaining stake is held by the Italian energy concern ENEL), which supplies electricity to Russian Railways, KamAZ and the Gas group. His other company, Rusenergoresurs (75% from the Unified Social Network), supplies electricity to Transneft. The group owns two oil terminals. Mr. Berezkin owns the telecommunications company Rusenergotelecom (75%) and has also invested in the development of the Sailfish operating system. It is believed that Grigory Berezkin maintains friendly relations with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, whom he met in the early 2000s, in his own words, “at work.”
Grigory Berezkin owns several print media. Since 2008, he has been developing the Moscow newspaper Metro, and since 2007 he has been the largest shareholder of the Komsomolskaya Pravda Publishing House. A Kommersant source familiar with Mr. Berezkin claims that he has not managed Komsomolskaya Pravda for more than a year and now the newspaper is controlled by the heir of St. Petersburg businessman Oleg Rudnov, Sergei, who is associated in the media market with businessman Yuri Kovalchuk. Two minority shareholders of Komsomolskaya Pravda, as follows from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, are Vitaly Krivenko and Sergey Orlov. Mr. Krivenko worked at the Mikhailov and Partners agency, and then at Russian Railways, like Mr. Orlov. They also own the publishing house RZD-Partner, which ESN sold in 2015.
A Kommersant source close to the deal clarifies that RBC is planned to be transferred to the management of Komsomolskaya Pravda shareholders, and Mr. Berezkin himself will not manage the media company.
Illustration copyright Alexandr Shcherbak/TASS
The owner of the ESN group of companies and the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, Grigory Berezkin, bought a controlling stake in the RBC holding from the structures of billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov. The parties announced the closing of the transaction. This may lead to a change in editorial policy, sources told the BBC: the previous one did not suit the Kremlin.
RBC is one of the largest private media holdings in Russia, operating since 1993. It includes a website, newspaper, magazine, TV channel, hosting service and several services.
The RBC website is one of the most visited and quoted media outlets on the Internet. In April, RBC editorial co-head Elizaveta Golikova reported that in March 2017, RBC's audience exceeded 23 million unique visitors.
Berezkin's ESN group owns oil terminals and energy traders. UST also owns a controlling stake in the publishing house Komsomolskaya Pravda, a newspaper that Russian President Vladimir Putin called his favorite.
Why did Prokhorov sell the publication?
Prokhorov made the decision to sell the holding under pressure from the presidential administration, according to a BBC source in the holding’s management and an interlocutor close to the presidential administration (both asked for anonymity, as they are not authorized to communicate with the press on this topic).
“He resisted for a long time, but he was convinced. I can’t say that he is very happy - the decision was made under pressure,” says one of the BBC’s interlocutors.
Businessman Prokhorov, ranked 13th in the ranking of the richest people in Russia according to Forbes, has owned a controlling stake in RBC since 2010. Since then, Prokhorov has managed to go the way of a public politician - to become the head of the Right Cause party, and then leave it. In 2012, he stood as a candidate for the Russian presidential elections.
At the end of 2014, RBC relaunched the website, newspaper and RBC magazine, and the publications began publishing investigative journalism. In 2014, the publication published an investigation into the number of Russian military personnel in southeastern Ukraine. And in 2015 - about Katerina Tikhonova, whom Reuters later called Putin’s daughter (the president himself never confirmed or denied that this is his daughter’s name).
As Vedomosti wrote, it was precisely such materials from RBC that caused “very strong irritation” among officials and “put pressure on Prokhorov, demanding to stop such disgrace.”
The RBC television channel and website actively covered protest rallies in 2017. In terms of audience coverage, the private holding company competed with the largest state media. For example, in March 2017, according to the Liveinternet counter, the RBC audience was 26.5 million people, the RIA Novosti audience was 27.4 million.
All this caused dissatisfaction with the presidential administration, say two sources of the BBC Russian Service close to the management of RBC and confirmed by BBC interlocutors close to the Kremlin.
“Very powerful” pressure allegedly comes from the deputy head of the presidential administration, Alexei Gromov (he is responsible in the Kremlin, among other things, for information policy), vc.ru reported in April, citing its sources.
Interlocutors of the BBC Russian Service within the holding itself agree with this.
RBC press secretary Egor Timofeev refused to answer the question whether the editorial office experienced pressure from the presidential administration.
The Kremlin is unhappy that in the run-up to the 2018 presidential elections, such an influential media outlet is publishing materials that are inconvenient for the Kremlin, two employees of the holding said in conversations with the BBC. “Gromov wants to turn off the Internet,” says one of them.
The presidential elections have only background significance, says Tatyana Stanovaya, an expert at the Center for Political Technologies. Against the backdrop of elections, the elites are fighting for resources and powers, raising the stakes, but the accumulated dissatisfaction of the security forces played a decisive role in the story with RBC.
“A change in the owner of the holding was a matter of time. Changing the editorial board a year ago was a half-hearted solution for intra-elite hawks like [head of the Russian National Guard] Viktor Zolotov, who are dissatisfied with RBC’s publications. And they are not inclined to such compromises,” the political scientist shares his opinion. According to her, security officials in power see RBC as a threat to the legitimacy of power and the weakening of the regime.
The BBC was unable to obtain a comment from Gromov himself.
Putin, answering a question from RBC about pressure on the holding from the Kremlin, replied: “I don’t know about that.” He added that “such media are needed.”
“I watch it myself, I like it,” the president said after the Direct Line, talking to reporters. According to Putin, he did not discuss the possible deal with any of its participants, but did not rule out the possibility of meeting with Prokhorov in the near future.
Will anything change in the publication?
“Under him, there won’t be anything like this [coverage of protests]. It will be like Russia-24,” an official who has known the businessman for a long time shares his opinion about the new owner of RBC.
RBC should be a business publication and write specifically about business - this approach to the editorial policy of the new owner of the holding is described by two acquaintances of Berezkin. Priority news for the publication are those that can affect the ruble exchange rate, one of them describes the attitude of a businessman to covering topics.
According to them, Berezkin also drew attention to the excessive politicization of the publication.
Before negotiations on the purchase, a content analysis of the publication’s publications was allegedly carried out. Based on them, it seems to have turned out that the mention of Alexei Navalny is comparable to the number of messages about the country’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, suggests one of the BBC’s interlocutors (according to the google.com search engine, over the past month there have been 380 messages about Navalny on the site, about Medvedev 430 messages).
The presidential administration considered such news coverage to be disproportionate, say BBC interlocutors close to the presidential administration and the holding’s management (both asked for anonymity, since the study was non-public and they were not authorized to communicate with the press), Berezkin with this approach I supposedly agree, they claim.
Berezkin himself spoke publicly about his attitude to the content of publications only once in an interview with vc.ru. “You can write the truth while offending, or you can write the truth without offending people,” he explained. Berezkin did not specify whether people were offended by previous RBC publications. But he assured that there would definitely be no censorship in the publication.
The new owner does not plan to change the holding team, Vedomosti wrote with reference to two acquaintances of Berezkin. According to the newspaper, Berezkin met with the general director of the holding Nikolai Molibog back in April and invited him to continue leading RBC.
The editorial team, managed by Elizaveta Golikova and Igor Trosnikov, will also be offered to stay, sources told Vedomosti. Presumably, a meeting between Berezkin and the editorial management is scheduled for next week, according to two BBC interlocutors in the editorial office who are not authorized to communicate with the press.
The new owner of RBC Berezkin negotiated about working in the holding with Alexey Abakumov, who now holds the post of deputy general director of the Rumedia group (manages the radio station Business FM), sources in the management of the holding, who was not authorized to comment on the situation for the press, told the BBC.
It was allegedly discussed that he could take the post of general director or editor. Abakumov is a candidate of the presidential administration, which last summer recommended that RBC shareholders hire him, Vedomosti wrote, citing a source.
In the spring, Abakumov spoke about the need to change the editorial policy of the publication, says a BBC interlocutor familiar with Abakumov. Abakumov himself denied his involvement in processes related to the selection of journalists and the future of RBC.
A year after the searches
At RBC, the editorial leadership changed just a year ago. In mid-April 2016, the offices of Prokhorov’s companies were searched by the FSB and tax authorities. Dozhd's sources then said that the searches were happening due to pressure on the owner of the holding.
A month later, the editor-in-chief of the RBC newspaper Makism Solyus was fired. Reuters wrote then that the Kremlin had previously expressed complaints to Prokhorov and the management of the holding regarding the coverage of the Panama Papers scandal. The last straw for the Kremlin, the agency said, was an article entitled “They will start breeding oysters in front of Putin’s palace near Gelendzhik.”
After Solyus’s dismissal, editor-in-chief Elizaveta Osetinskaya and site editor-in-chief Roman Badanin left their posts. Following Osetinskaya and Badanin, most of the team of journalists who came with them, who had previously worked at Forbes, Vedomosti, Kommersant, etc., left RBC.
Badanin and Osetinskaya were replaced by Trosnikov and Golikova (co-heads of the editorial office). Before RBC, the new managers worked at Kommersant and then at TASS. Golikova’s phrase about “double solid” caused a great resonance during the first meeting of the new management with the editors (a transcript of the meeting was published by Meduza). These words were perceived by journalists as indicating a censorship framework.
Under the new leadership, investigations at RBC actually became fewer, and the publication no longer wrote its own texts about Putin’s family.
“There is no ban as such, and there never was, it’s just that the texts that are associated with it [Putin’s family] had to be seriously discussed before writing in order to assess the risks and prepare for the reaction of officials,” an RBC employee describes the principles of the publication’s work. He also notes that with the departure of many employees after the dismissal of Osetinskaya and Badanin, the editorial office did not have enough hands for the investigations that became the hallmark of RBC.
There was no pressure on the editors from the current owners of RBC regarding topics that can and cannot be covered, says a BBC interlocutor in the holding’s management.
Later, Vedomosti wrote about Prokhorov’s intention to sell Russian assets, including RBC. However, at the end of summer, the newspaper's sources said that there were no buyers for the holding.
Two of the publication’s interlocutors said that the businessman is ready to sell this asset to RBC for $250 million (including a debt of $200 million). The businessman sold shares in several companies, including Rusal and the development company OPIN.
Berezkin's interest in RBC became known at the end of April - then the RNS agency and the Vedomosti newspaper reported about it. Now the unified social tax and debt obligations of RBC PJSC, the transaction amount is not disclosed.
Berezkin, in response to all the BBC’s questions, sent a caricature of a Bosch painting with the caption “It’s just all depressing, some kind of unhealthy atmosphere.” He did not answer substantive questions.
Negotiations on the sale of RBC are approaching the finish line - on Wednesday, May 10, it became known that the FAS received a request to acquire a 65.43% stake in the RBC holding from the owner of the ESN group, Grigory Berezkin. A well-known Russian journalist told Realnoe Vremya about how the sale of the holding could affect the format and editorial policy of the publication, what will happen to the old RBC team and why Berezkin is not afraid to acquire media outlets with millions in debt.
“An excellent investigation there could have been accompanied by a note about Putin eating children.”
Anastasia, what do you think about the sale of the RBC holding - how serious is this event for the Russian media sphere?
The fact that RBC was preparing for sale was already clear when editor-in-chief Elizaveta Osetinskaya left the publication. Initially, it was an old-style business publication: what I mean is that there was no such speed of news delivery - they were all seasoned and checked. RBC has always maintained its brand. Then Lisa came, who only improved the publication. But I think that both she and her team understood that something similar could happen to them.
The fact is that many of their materials were directly anti-state in nature: a smart investigation there could be side by side with a note about the fact that Putin is Hitler and he eats children. I think that this could be a little too much even for European publications, which feel quite at ease: for example, some gay magazine, like Garcon, can depict the elected president of France with a naked hummock on its cover. In Russia, this is not only unacceptable, we just hold slightly different views - we are conservatives in this regard for now. We are a northern country, cold ( laughs). I think that they walked on the edge of a knife, and Mikhail Prokhorov allowed them to do this.
In my opinion, Prokhorov to some extent used RBC for some of his business interests. He started having problems and tried to solve them through RBC. Taken together, all this influenced the fact that the question of repurchasing the holding arose. When Lisa left, people from TASS began to come there, and it became clear that when the team changed, the owner himself would change.
“I think they walked on a knife edge, and Mikhail Prokhorov allowed them to do it.” Photo finparty.ru
If we talk about “risky” content, is this “crossing the double solid” forever a thing of the past for RBC?
I don’t think that this is a “double solid”, it’s just that the guys published such things at their own peril and risk. Moreover, it’s one thing when these things are published with some reason, but when we see a groundless attack on business interests, we must understand that sooner or later you can pay for it - it’s very difficult for us to “maneuver between the trickles.”
State regulation of certain issues and this “state whip” in relation to the media sometimes work negatively for us. For example, if Vladimir Putin can forgive a publication about his daughter, the Kremlin cannot forgive this. Officials begin to figure out what the publication was connected with, and they discover some business interests there. What I mean is that we don’t have independent journalism as such, and these materials were published for someone’s purposes, and “those at the top” know exactly whose purposes.
“I’m a terrible Putinist - I love the president, I respect him as a person and as a manager, but...”
How might the sale of the holding affect the publication’s editorial policy? If you fantasize, what could RBC turn into?
RBC's style has already changed. I know the guys who now work at RBC - they are excellent journalists, but, naturally, if a new owner comes, he will begin to defend someone’s interests.
As far as I understand, there is now such a shake-up in the media ahead of the presidential election. The last milestone was passed when Tatyana Lysova left Vedomosti. Dozhd transformed, then RBC followed, and only then Vedomosti. After this, it became clear that they wanted to create a more ultra-patriotic agenda before the elections.
“I am a terrible Putinist - I love the president, I respect him as a person and as a manager, but I understand perfectly well that he is not the only one who makes politics in the country and that it is easier for these people not to come to an agreement, not to wage a beautiful fight with people who have a different opinion, but it’s easier for them to just remove them from the chessboard.” Photo kremlin.ru
I think this is not very good, because there must be some kind of valve that would release all the accumulated steam. If there is no such media now, then there will be a negative attitude towards the authorities - I emphasize that it is towards the authorities... You see, I am a terrible Putinist - I love the president, I respect him as a person and as a manager, but I understand perfectly well that he is not the only one who makes politics country and that it is easier for these people not to come to an agreement, not to have a nice fight with people who have a different opinion, but it is easier for them to simply remove them from the chessboard. This is categorically wrong.
- What do you think will happen to the publication team?
I am of two minds about this. If a person comes who will not tighten the screws or severely limit the guys in their investigations and materials, then the team can survive. If a tough person comes... The fact is that if you care about your state, this does not mean that you should not write about corruption scandals and that you will hush up this topic. But as far as I know opposition journalists, they would rather finish their bread without butter, but still remain in their opinion, but not because they are so proud and independent, but because they do not know how to “maneuver between the streams” - they don’t given. They are too straightforward, just like our jingoistic patriots. They are completely inflexible - unfortunately, Russian journalism is still inflexible. You can write material about corruption that is not one-sided, not one-sided, but our presentation of materials is so far either overly far-fetched, oppositional, made up from thin air, or about the fact that: “Well, they stole 120 billion - so what? They steal even more abroad.” We still live in such cramped conditions.
“I think that Prokhorov deliberately brought the RBC holding into debt to himself”
- What kind of figure is Grigory Berezkin? Does he have experience managing business media?
If you look at Grigory Viktorovich as a person - from the point of view of how he carries himself, what kind of look he has, and so on, then I think that he really knows how to find the middle, keep the team together and at the same time not let the media ratings fall . I think that his activities and his track record indicate this - he has been involved in the energy and oil industry all his life. But I didn’t work with him, so I can’t say exactly what kind of manager he is - I judge him by what he did and by what was written about him. He is modern, he understands economics... Here you can expect, on the contrary, perhaps some kind of flourishing or format update.
Everyone compares RBC with the period of Liza Osetinskaya, and after her departure the publication sank somewhat in the ratings, so now Berezkin faces an important task - to find a middle ground and show that journalism can be different, that you can criticize the authorities, but do it without going too far stick in the direction of hatred of one’s state (which sometimes slipped through Osetinskaya’s mind).
“Now Berezkin faces an important task - to find a middle ground and show that journalism can be different, that you can criticize the authorities, but do it without going too far in the direction of hatred of your state.” Photo: Alexey Nikolsky / press service of the President of the Russian Federation / TASS / Scanpix / LETA
And the fact that the Kremlin does not interfere in the affairs of RBC is, I think, a fiction, because we all know who the curators of the media in the Kremlin are, and we understand perfectly well that such a deal cannot be completed without some kind of consultation and close attention of the Kremlin . I think that the Kremlin will someday find the strength to say that it is monitoring the situation, because RBC is a serious player in the media market.
RBC has serious debts to Prokhorov’s structures (if I’m not mistaken, we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars). Why is Berezkin acquiring RBC in such a difficult financial situation?
I think that Prokhorov deliberately brought the RBC holding into debt to himself, because, you see, no one wants to sell something for next to nothing or not win from the sale. Prokhorov himself bought the holding in not the best condition.
I think they will pay something, and someone will help him [Berezkin] (laughs) , otherwise a person would not buy this holding - no one will buy an absolutely unprofitable project. This deal is necessary: the Kremlin needs it, and Berezkin and Prokhorov are also looking for their benefits from this deal. So in this situation, it seems to me, both the sheep will be safe and the wolves will be fed.
In general, our media earn very little. You see how many billions of dollars are being poured into state media, but their effectiveness is zero. We all praise Russia Today, but no one watches them. This is a big disadvantage for our media managers.
Lina Sarimova
