The fund of Vladimir Potanin, a Russian oligarch close to the Kremlin, announced on Thursday that it had bought the shares in a flagship company from another Russian billionaire, Oleg Tinkov, who recently criticized the conflict in Ukraine.
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In a press release, the investment fund Interros indicated that it had become the owner of “35% of the shares of TCS Group Holding”, ie the share held by Mr. Tinkov in this group, which includes the online bank Tinkoff among its subsidiaries.
Founded in 2006 by Oleg Tinkov and a great FinTech success of the last few years, this bank claimed in 2020 to be the third retail bank in Russia.
“I am proud to have built with my team the best bank in the country (…). Now it’s time to retire and take care of my health and my family,” Mr. Tinkov, 54, said Thursday, quoted in the Interros press release.
A few days earlier, on April 19, he had blasted the conflict in Ukraine on social media and called on the West to help end this “massacre”.
Vladimir Potanine | Photo d’archives, AFP
In response, the Tinkoff bank recalled that the billionaire, who left the post of CEO in 2020, no longer made decisions concerning the group’s operations. The bank also announced a redesign of its brand following these declarations.
Oleg Tinkov is currently targeted by British sanctions in connection with the Russian offensive.
The new buyer, Vladimir Potanin, 61, is one of Russia’s most powerful oligarchs. He was in 2021 the second richest personality in the country with a fortune estimated at 27 billion dollars, according to Forbes magazine.
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In mid-April, the French bank Société Générale also announced the sale to Vladimir Potanin’s fund of its stake in Rosbank, a heavyweight in the Russian banking sector.
