Page 34 - bne_November 2020_20201104

34 I Cover story bne November 2020
IPO
IPO $20.6bn
P41bn
$10bn $6.2bn
The retail bank has made similar investments into companies across the industrial spectrum to create a network of services made up at least 40 entities that it is slowly bringing together into a complete ecosystem.
Traditional retail has also attracted attention, as the leading retailers
Russian tech deals galore
Ben Aris in Berlin
As Russia’s new economy comes of age it seems there is a new deal announced on a daily basis as the leading companies snap up start-ups or rivals in the rush to build an ecosystem that covers all of life’s needs and wants.
There are too many deals to go into one article but several really big ones have caught the headlines in the last few months.
Russian internet giant Yandex agreed to buy Russia’s only purely online bank Tinkoff Bank that is owned
by TCB Group for a whopping $5.5bn in October, which would have added
a powerful financial arm to the Cyrillic version of Google. However, the deal fell apart at the last moment after
a reported argument of who was going to be in charge afterwards: Tinkoff Bank was talking about a “merger”, whereas Yandex talked about a “sale.” Yandex is proving to be a prickly partner, as it had already entered into a joint venture with Sber (formally called Sberbank until it dropped the “bank” part of its name in October). By getting into bed with Russia’s biggest bank, the partners intended to
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build a multifunctional market place that would have covered half the population. But that deal also fell apart after a year, again over disagreements over who was going to be in charge.
Sberbank and Yandex are now rivals in an increasingly competitive market and are both rapidly fleshing out
“Sberbank and Yandex are now rivals in an increasingly competitive market and are both rapidly fleshing out their portfolio of services through a never-ending string of acquisitions”
their portfolio of services through
a never-ending string of acquisitions.
The deals are too numerous to list
but in one of the most recent, Sber expanded its ecosystem by buying
a 45% stake of online pharma distributor Eapteka, the second-biggest in the country, together with Russian pharmaceutical producer R-Pharm.
are proving to be great platforms for building e-commerce businesses, as they come with ready-made storage and logistical solutions. In a country as big as Russia, having an efficient logistics platform is a pre-requisite for building
a working e-commerce business.
Sber’s main rival and the second-largest bank in the country, state-owned VTB