Almost all owners of Stars Coffee pledged their shares in the company to Sberbank

• The American chain Starbucks, like other foreign companies, left the Russian market due to the entry of the Russian Armed Forces into Ukraine. Restaurateur Anton Pinsky and singer and music producer Timur Yunusov (Timati) decided to buy the Russian business network. The chain changed its name in 2022, but only in 2023 Pinsky announced the approximate cost of the deal: about 500 million rubles.

In addition to Pinsky and Timati, other participants joined the project. At the moment, the shares of Arena LLC (legal entity of Stars Cofee) are distributed as follows: 32.5% belongs to Anton Pinsky, 21.2% belongs to Brilliant Consulting LLC, the same amount is retained by Timur Yunusov, 10% belongs to individual businessmen González Casas Ernesto Enrique, also 10% to Sergei Kropachev and the remaining 5% belong to Oleg Eskindarov.

All shares, apart from those of Yunusov and Kropachev, are pledged in Sberbank PJSC. At the time of this publication, the credit institution did not respond to RB.RU’s request and Stars Coffee also did not comment on the situation.

According to Polina Gusyatnikova, senior managing partner at law firm PG Partners, pledging shares is a common practice in companies. Overall, this approach can be both a negative and positive signal for companies. But in this case this is quite good, because if Sberbank gives a loan, it means that it considers the business promising.

However, the director of the credit institution, German Gref, had previously discussed with Timati about the chain’s sales dynamics. The president of the state bank indicated that after the sign change they fell 76%. Timati responded by suggesting that Gref fire his analysts and announced a 5% increase in sales.

According to the Kontur.Focus service, Arena LLC’s revenue in 2022 amounted to just over 379 million rubles, with a loss of 60 million rubles.

Financial expert, author of the Telegram channel “Economism”, Alexey Krichevsky, notes that pledging shares may indicate a lack of working capital or the desire to expand the network.

At the same time, the expert points out that the option of a hidden sale is theoretically possible, although it is unlikely. Such a development of events would cause a huge scandal and would negatively affect Timati’s reputation.

Irina Egorova, head of corporate and tax practice at Intercession, for her part, recalls that the conditions of the business purchase transaction are still unknown. Although Pinsky cited the approximate cost of 500 million rubles, the parties did not disclose the payment term.

At the same time, Egorova draws attention to the fact that not all shares of the participants are pledged and adds that, in theory, they could be pledged as collateral for obligations to the Federal Tax Service or other creditors.