Multi-Millionaire Serhiy Kurchenko will buy United Media Holding (UMH), owner of influential business magazine Forbes Ukraine.
The 27-year-old owner of VETEK energy holding will buy UMH, one of the country’s biggest media holdings, whose assets included Focus, Vogue, Korrespondent, and Forbes Ukraine, the latter publication announced late in the evening on June 20. In 2011, the group’s revenues were $138 million. The sale of Focus to two Odesa-based businessmen with no prior media experience was announced earlier in the week.
“Serhiy Kuchenko during negotiations promised to invest $100 million over the next three years,” Ukrainska Pravda reported citing Boris Lozhkin, the media holding’s now former owner. “From UMH company’s point of view, the arrival of a new owner with a huge appetite for investment is very beneficial.”
The former media holding owner said that in April he estimated his former company to be worth $450-$500 million, which is similar to what was agreed to as the sale price. Ukrainska Pravda wrote that according to an informal meeting with a top UMH manager, the company’s earnings in 2012 before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization was some $30 million and revenue stood at more than $160 million.
Lozhkin furthermore said a non-competitive clause is in effect until March 14 barring him from entering the media business.
Kurchenko has made headlines recently for his unexpected and significant entry into Ukraine’s highly politicized gas sector through VETEK, which is in talks to become an importer of Russian gas, a privilege only shared by state giant Naftohaz, Ostchem, owned by billionaire Dmytro Firtash, and Metinvest, owned by billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, according to news agency Interfax.
Forbes Ukraine chief editor Vladimir Fedorin wrote in an article that he would quit his post as of Oct. 1, despite having a valid contract until December.
He also wrote he suspected the deal was made for one of three reasons (or possibly all three): to silence journalists ahead of the upcoming presidential elections; to burnish the new owner’s reputation; to use the publication to resolve issues not connected to the media business.
In past months Forbes Ukraine published numerous hard-hitting reports, notably on public tenders won by the president’s son, as well as numerous investigations into the gas and energy sector.
