14 Jul 2011 18:05
14 July 2011 For immediate release
MAIL.RU GROUP LIMITED
("Mail.ru Group" or the "Company")
Exercise of Option
London / Moscow - MAIL.RU GROUP LIMITED (LSE: MAIL), is pleased to confirm that it has exercised its option to acquire a further stake of 7.44% in VKontakte for $111.7m. The option is as described in the Company's prospectus and as also mentioned in its completion of transaction announcement on 16th November 2010.
The completion of this transaction brings Mail.ru Group's total equity stake in VKontakte to 39.99%.
For further information please contact:
Matthew Hammond
Managing Director
Phone: +971 443 484 22 / +971 505 56 1315
Financial Dynamics
London | +44 (0)20 7831 3113 | Moscow | +7 495 795 06 23 |
James Melville-Ross | Oleg Leonov | ||
Charles Palmer | Olga Terebova | ||
Jon Snowball | |||
Emma Appleton |
About Mail.ru
Mail.ru Group is the largest Internet company in the high-growth Russian-speaking Internet markets. Mail.ru Group's sites reach approximately 70 per cent of Russian Internet users on a monthly basis and the Company is the world's seventh largest Internet business, based on page viewsi. Russia is today Europe's second largest Internet market measured by number of usersii.
The origins of the Company date back to 1998 and since its formation as a group in 2005, and particularly since the end of 2008, the Company has moved rapidly to build an integrated communication and entertainment platform that allows it to attract and monetise one of the largest daily Internet audiences in the Russian speaking world. The Company, which is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, operates two of the threeiii largest Russian language online social networking sites (Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir (or "My World")). The Company also operates the two largest Instant Messaging ("IM") networks in Russia (Agent and ICQ), Russia's leading email service and Russia's second largest Internet portal based on daily and monthly unique users (Mail.ru), and the Company operates Russia's largest online games platform.
The Company holds strategic minority equity stakes in vKontakte and Qiwi (formerly OE Investments). It holds a 39.99 per cent stake in vKontakte, Russia's largest social networking site measured by daily unique users, and it holds a 21.4 per cent interest in Qiwi, one of Russia's leading payment processing companies. The Company also holds small minority stakes in international Internet companies including Facebook, Zynga and Groupon as well as a number of small venture capital investments in various Internet companies in Russia and Ukraine.
i Source: comScore
ii J'Son & Partners (September 2010)
iii Based on monthly unique users. Source: TNS Gallup