Page 16 - bne_newspaper_January_19_2018

Eastern Europe
January 19, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 16
travels back to Russia where he retains significant holdings in the retailer X5, VimpelCom as well as Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest privately-held lender.
The L1 Technology Team is responsible for the sourcing, screening and presenting of investment opportunities for approval by its board, as well as the strategy and operational performance of the existing investment portfolio. The team is sup- ported by an independent Advisory Board, which includes the former founder of Lastminute.com Brent Hoberman, Ireland’s richest man Denis O’Brien and Osama Bedier, CEO of the payments startup Poynt.
LetterOne has been busy ploughing the TNK-BP proceeds into overseas energy, telecom and tech- nology assets like ride-sharing app Uber. The fund spent $1.6bn on E.ON’s oil and gas assets in the North Sea only after the UK government forced it to sell its North Sea fields in the country because of the risk of facing Russian sanctions.
In 2017, LetterOne closed two major transac- tions by buying the iconic English healthy food chain Holland & Barrett for $2.3bn and invest-
ing $3.0bn in Pamplona Capital Management,
the private equity operation owned by Alexander Knaster, a former partner of Fridman’s in Moscow. Fridman has also invested $200mn in Uber, the controversial ride-sharing app.
Meanwhile Alfa Bank, Fridman’s Russian lender, has emerged as one of the last men standing in terms
of the country’s large privately-controlled lenders. Alfa’s main competitors, including Otkritie, B&N Bank and Promsvyazbank, have all been bailed in out by the Russian state in deals worth a combined RUB1 trillion over the past five months.
The Ukranian-born tycoon might be worried about his teflon personna losing its grip. A Rus- sian newspaper published a list of 300 oligarchs, including Fridman, who might be included in new US sanctions.
Fridman has stopped working with the Russian defense ministry as a precaution but that might not be sufficient. His Alfa business was cited
in the infamous dossier of former British spy Chistopher Steele that was published by BuzzFeed last year.
It states that Alfa allegedly carried out Presi- dent Putin's orders and helped interfere in the US Presidential elections. Alfa is currently suing BuzzFeed.
Fridman began his own business career by start- ing a window-washing business in Moscow with classmates. There was little competition for his business, but when it became more competitive, he and his partners moved on to selling consumer goods, and established their own bank to provide themselves with capital and currency.
“We lived in a country with no tradition of doing business, with no property rights,” Fridman told Yale students in November last year about the obstacles that he and his partners faced.
Fridman said the formation of LetterOne, which manages a massive pot worth $23bn, was driven by the large increase in state-run businesses in Russia, and the desire to invest abroad.
In a rare interview with the foreign press,
Fridman told the Financial Times over lunch last year that he is on a mission to improve the image of his country’s business elite. “It’s our moral
duty to become a global player, to prove a Russian can transform into an international businessman,” he said.
But a straw poll of Moscow analysts uniformly guffawed upon hearing of Fridman’s elevation to a figurehead for good Russian corporate govern- ance on the global stage. “Fridman is no Mary Poppins,” a leading Moscow-based strategist told bne IntelliNews. “He’s clearly moved to Lon- don to run his fast-growing overseas portfolio.”