Viacom is close to selling a majority stake in its Russian business in order to comply with upcoming restrictions on the level of foreign ownership in media companies.
Quoting three unnamed sources, RBC and AKTR report that Maxim Mayorets, a leading manager at Renova, will acquire an 80% stake through his own company.
Earlier, it had been expected that Renova would itself buy the stake. They add that Renova is not sponsoring the deal, with Mayorets paying for the stake with borrowed funding.
Although there is no official figure for the value of the stake, one analyst, taking the recent sale of MTG’s thematic channels as a financial benchmark, has estimated it to be around $17 million, with the total worth of Viacom’s Russian business being $21 million.
Viacom distributes a total of 12 TV channels in Russia, the most popular of which is Nickelodeon.
