The management company Solid Management became the owner of part of the assets of Qiwi co-founder Sergei Solonin.

RB.RU discovered changes in three startups that previously received investments from Solonin. Thus, according to the Kontur.Focus system, Solid Management JSC received shares in startups Facilities, Restik AND zero encoder. The size of the shares received from the management company corresponds in each case to those owned by Solonin.

• Since December 14, 55.23% in LLC “Theories and Practices” (legal entity of the Kampus corporate training platform) transferred to Solid Management JSC. Until August 24, 2023, the same share belonged to Sergei Solonin.

The Kampus press service explained to RB.RU that it is about changing the legal form of ownership. “Solonin owns, as before, exclusive rights to this action,” they added.

In early November, VimpelCom, created for venture investments, invested in the same startup. Hive LLC received 12% of Kampus. Another 10% currently belongs to Nadezhda Makova and 7.59% each to Alexey Ilyin, Alexander Limansky and Ilya Dolgopolsky.

• Solid Management received a minor stake (13.05%) in the cloud services platform for cafes and restaurants Restik. On December 19, the structure entered OOO “Restik”, where until June 2023 13.05% belonged to Sergei Solonin. At the same time, VimpelCom also invested in this project through Hive LLC. In November, Hive received 10% of the startup.

At the moment, founders Oleg Suzhaev and Kirill Gusev retain 25.96% and 23.73%, respectively. Edgar Klimov and Alexey Shestakov also have 8.6% each. Viktor Khristenko owns 4.2%, Andrey Danilov – 4%. And another 1.82% stays with Alexander Taran. RB.RU sent a request to Restik, but at the time of this publication did not receive a response.

• Solid Management received another 6% on December 14 Zerocoder LLC (Zerocoder, an online school teaching no-code development) – the same proportion previously belonged to Solonin. Several changes occurred in the structure of the owners of this company: nominally Solonin (owned 6% of the LLC), the co-founder of the project Vadim Mikhalev, Mikhail Smolyanov (22.25% each), Victor Lamburt (2%) participants dropped out. .

Among the new owners are JSC Solid Management (received 6%, a share similar to that of Solonin), Oleg Dorokhov (29.32%), Sergei Petrakovsky (15%), Andrey Kholodiy (2%). As a result of the changes, Anatoly Solovyov increased his share (from 22.25% to 29.32%), Leonid Byakov decreased from 22.24% to 7.24%, Sergey Brazhnik (2%) and Kirill Pshinnik ( 1%) kept their shares).

Zerocoder did not officially comment on the changes.

Representatives of Solid Management, in response to a request from RB.RU regarding communication with Solonin, said that “information about a closed-end mutual fund, the shares of which have limited circulation, is not subject to public disclosure.” Sergei Solonin and his representatives did not respond to the request at the time of this publication.

What experts say about changes in asset ownership structure

In the transfer of personal investments under a common “umbrella” there is nothing unusual or specific for 2024, neither Russia, nor Solonin personally, believe co-founder of United Investors Alexander Gorny. “Many people do this and have always done it for various reasons: from tax savings to the desire to allocate a portion of the investment to their managers,” the investor noted.

Lawyer Igor Apóstol I agree that the transfer of asset management to conditionally unaffiliated and sometimes almost anonymous legal entities is not an innovation of today’s realities, but a rather old tool for protecting businesses. This practice, he stated, is common not only in Russia.

“Large companies, as well as successful new companies, have always had and continue to have the risk of being taken over by raiders, so the presence of a public asset by a businessman often becomes a reason for extortion and other criminal attacks. Furthermore, in some cases, the private life of the owner becomes a reason for imposing arrests and other encumbrances on his property, which can ultimately lead to the cessation of activities and, sometimes, to the collapse of the company,” Apostol points out.

• Sergey Solonin is a Russian businessman and investor, co-founder of the Qiwi payment service. He makes private investments in fintech projects. Solonin invested in Kampus in November 2019, in Restik and Zerocoder in March 2023.
• JSC Solid Management has been operating in the securities market since 1997. It manages investment funds, mutual funds and non-state pension funds. According to the management company’s own data, the total value of net assets amounts to 322 billion rubles.

Anastasia Maryina and Natalya Gormaleva worked on the material.