With a net worth of nearly US$20 billion, Alisher Usmanov is expected to make his fair share of outrageous purchases. The very wealthy Russian’s extravagant outlay for 2014 was not a yacht or a sports team though. For this intrepid entrepreneur there was not even a small island or a few lavish parties jotted down on the must-buy list. Instead of the typical things a Russian tycoon might splash out on, Usmanov decided to spend a substantial sum of money on buying a social network. It cost the oligarch billions to gain complete control of VKontakte – the Russian equivalent of Facebook.
Hyped up for High-tech
After starting his empire by spotting a gap in the market and selling plastic bags, Alisher Usmanov moved on to metal, and now owns one of the world’s biggest iron ore extractors Mettaloinvest. As always, Usmanov is on a forward trajectory and continues to invest in other areas. Lately he has become known for his keen interest in technologically driven companies and has vested interests in Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and Alibaba and also owns several television stations in Russia. Buying his own social network seems to be a logical next step for a forward thinking billionaire like Usmanov.
Millions of Russians Love VKontakte
VKontakte is Russia’s most prominent social network. It has more than 60 million users in Russia while the international social network giant Facebook has only around 13 million users in the country. Alisher Usmanov’s company Mail.ru Group has been systematically acquiring the social media site since 2007 when the Russian Internet company first started buying VKontakte stock. The final 48 percent was acquired in 2014 after the company paid a further US$1.47 billion to make it a hundred percent owned. According to Bloomberg.com, the total that was spent to achieve this was over US$2 billion. More or less ten percent of the Russian oligarch’s net worth certainly counts as an outrageous purchase, but what else is to be expected from Russia’s richest?