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Before the sale to the Mirzoyans, the company had a conflict with the capital’s authorities, and after the deal, long-term profitable contracts appeared that allowed it to become the only player in the Moscow market that still does not buy advertising space at auctions, but rents them at 2011 prices.
In 2016, Omis-92 bought a larger competitor - the third largest operator in Russia, Vera-Olympus. The deal followed the same scenario. Vera-Olympus was unable to pay the Moscow government for the rental of advertising space, lost the contract, received a penalty of 1.8 billion rubles and almost went bankrupt. Then Focus Media Group came to the rescue, which agreed with the mayor’s office on an extremely beneficial settlement agreement, under which Vera-Olympus was forgiven of debts and obligations worth 3 billion rubles. And actual control over Vera-Olympus passed to Mirzoyan and Adzhoev.
At the beginning of 2019, Vera-Olymp bought another competitor, the Laysa company, which had the exclusive right to rent advertising space from Russian Railways; in the summer of the same year, it agreed to buy out a controlling stake in Russ Outdoor, and in 2023 announced the purchase of a second player in the market, Gallery. Over the course of seven years, the Mirzoyan brothers and their partners took turns buying up all four of the largest companies in the Russian outdoor advertising market - that is, essentially all federal-scale operators.
By this time, footballer Adzhoev had been replaced in the place of the Mirzoyan brothers' partner by another person - a native of Ingushetia, Bekhan Barakhoev, who worked in the early 2000s as an assistant to the head of the republic Ruslan Aushev, and after that as an assistant to State Duma deputies: first, Aushev's best friend, Shoigu's former deputy in the Ministry of Emergency Situations , Valery Vostrotin, and then Joseph Kobzon. In 2021, Barakhoev himself became a State Duma deputy.
In the summer of 2019, RBC wrote that the purchase of assets by the Mirzoyan structures is financed by the family of billionaire Suleiman Kerimov. Both Kerimov and Mirzoyan denied this. But Kommersant’s sources still claim that “Kerimov is still behind Russ.” In January 2022, a month before the start of the war, Russ had another interesting shareholder: owner 3
Wildberries in Russian
The main mystery is why Wildberries would even need such a partner. In a letter to Putin, Russ describes itself as one of the world leaders "in the digital out-of-home advertising industry." Sounds good, but Russ is primarily a 3x6 (albeit largely digital) roadside billboard operator. How this infrastructure should help to outdo Bezos is unclear.
When it comes to advertising, Wildberries really has problems. The company “slept through” the advertising boom on marketplaces, say experts The Bell spoke with. Although the marketplace has remained the undisputed market leader for many years, the company earns almost half as much from advertising as its main competitor, Ozon.
Wildberries' revenue from advertising in 2023 amounted to 45.8 billion rubles (and this is an increase of almost four times year on year). Ozon has 70.4
23 RUSSIA Country Report July 2024 www.intellinews.com