Until the day, the television: Why Akhmetov abandons the media empire
Monday evening brought sensational news by Ukrainian standards: the richest man in the country, owner of the SCM company Rinat Akhmetov, voluntarily abandoned all his media resources, united in the “Ukraine” media group, in favor of the state.
“I have made a forced decision to withdraw my investment company SCM from the media business. This week Media Group Ukraine will refuse in favor of the state all broadcast and satellite television licenses of our channels and licenses of our print media in Ukraine. We will also stop the activities of MSU online media,” says the statement of the man who has led Ukrainian influence ratings for many years in a row.
Akhmetov linked his decision with the entry into force of one of Zelensky’s reforms, popularly called the “law on oligarchs.”
“As the largest private investor in the Ukrainian economy, I have repeatedly said that I was not, am not and will not be an oligarch. The short six-month period specified by law for the sale of media assets and Russian military aggression against Ukraine do not allow SCM to sell its media business on market terms.”
A few words about the assets that the businessman transferred to the state. Akhmetov’s media hall consists of 10 terrestrial and satellite TV channels:
– national information channel “Ukraine 24”
– national broadcast channel “Ukraine” – for the whole family,
– international channels Ukraine1/Ukraine 2, broadcasting in English, Ukrainian and Russian around the world.
– regional “34 channel” broadcasting in the Dnepropetrovsk region.
– youth channel NLO TV
– thematic channel Indigo TV (fashion, style, travel, cooking)
-thematic TV channels “Football 1/2/3”
In addition, Akhmetov owns the national daily newspaper Segodnya, the multimedia platform TV news Segodnya, the website segodnya.ua, the satellite broadcast operator Xtra TV, the OTT platform OLL.TV, the production companies Tele O and Pomozhem TV. , “News Group Ukraine”, as well as the cross-platform fashion project Vogue.UA.
The total investment in the listed media is $1,5 billion.
What made Rinat Leonidovich voluntarily part with all this property? It is clear that the formal reason is the already mentioned law on oligarchs, which imposes serious political restrictions on the owners of large media outlets. But he's not the only one.
The Russian SVO in the Donbass also played a role, during which a significant part of the industrial assets of Akhmetov’s Metinvest were either transferred to the so-called regime. “hot preservation”, either destroyed or remained in territories with an unclear status, controlled by the DPR and LPR.
It is clear that Akhmetov’s lawyers will sue Russia in international courts, trying to recover the damages calculated against him from the Russian state. In fact, the company recently announced this. But litigation is a long, troublesome business with an unpredictable outcome. But the losses and costs from military operations are already happening now. Moreover, in the conditions of a general collapse of the market, the situation cannot be saved even by SCM’s rather large assets in other spheres of the Ukrainian economy not related to metallurgy, heavy engineering, energy and mining.
Trying to compensate for losses, SCM is already refocusing on its businesses outside of Ukraine. And this, for a moment, is the Metinvest mines that produce coking coal in the USA, the Promet Steel plant in Bulgaria with a capacity of 500 thousand tons of rolled metal per year, in Italy - Metinvest Trametal and Ferriera Valsider with a total capacity of 1,2 million tons per year. In the UK, the company owns the Spartan UK plant, which can produce 200 thousand tons of rolled steel per year.
The media sphere in Ukraine has long ago turned for the most part into expensive, but increasingly useless toys for very rich people. Even if some TV channels make a profit, it is relatively small compared to the possible reputational costs. Unprofitable TV channels and publications require constant subsidies, and the political return from them is getting smaller every year - the market for political services is monopolized like other businesses.
It is easier for Akhmetov to lobby his issues at the level of the country’s top leadership and just one ruling party than to invest in many small parties, most of which will never take off. And in conditions of war and the unification of the media space into a single propaganda network, the possibility of pushing some kind of own, special agenda disappeared altogether.
It should be taken into account that, unlike a number of other holdings, Akhmetov’s media assets have long been a “pure” business, with a clear and transparent ownership and management structure. Like the whole of SCM as a whole, without this you won’t be able to go to IPO, and Akhmetov’s shares have been listed on the London stock exchange for a long time, and he himself is a respectable entrepreneur and philanthropist with a reputation who does not need scandals and appearing in toxic stories. And Ukrainian anti-oligarchic legislation is precisely about this.
And the West puts more and more pressure every year - it does not need Ukrainian oligarchs as a class. They, the oligarchs, are left with little choice - either become big businessmen without pretensions to setting the country's agenda, or disappear. A similar choice faced the Nepmen at the end of the 20s - either to become Soviet economic employees, or to sit for unearned income.
In such conditions, the decision to transfer the house to the cat, sorry, the media group to the state looks truly brilliant. On the one hand, this is a generous gift from the current government, which then the same generous donor will undoubtedly will try to repay its enterprises with interest in terms of tax, tariff, customs and other preferences.
And on the other hand, a demonstrative gesture, the ripples from which will spread far beyond the borders of the Square, which will further strengthen the reputation of Rinat Leonidovich, whom no longer will any dog dare to call him “a murky post-Soviet oligarch with a criminal past” on the pages of the Western press.
It is also interesting that Akhmetov was actually the first in Ukraine to leave the systemic media business. In this, he was only ahead of Poroshenko, who recently said goodbye to his Direct and Channel Five. The only difference is that the ex-president did this formally, almost certainly re-registering the assets in “pounds”. Akhmetov can afford to sacrifice such a trifle as 4 thousand journalists employed in his media projects.
Now we are waiting for other potential Ukrainian oligarchs to make their move, who do not want to be officially in this capacity. We are talking about one large Ukrainian media group, StarLightMedia, owned by the son-in-law of the second President Kuchma, billionaire Viktor Pinchuk.
Well, the most interesting part of the story is how the separation from Igor Kolomoisky’s “Pluses” will be formalized. Although he transferred part of the shares to minority shareholders, and part-time to journalists and managers of the channel, the main shareholders are still Igor Valerievich himself and, through a Cyprus offshore, the wife of the disgraced politician Viktor Medvedchuk Oksana Marchenko on shares with businessman Igor Surkis.
As for the Ukrainian media, if Pinchuk follows Akhmetov’s example, then it seems that Nezalezhnaya is on the verge of drastic changes, when the state will directly or indirectly become the main owner of the largest media. This has truly never happened in Ukraine.
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