Among other things, there was information that Russell is in the deal only for marketing: an American technology entrepreneur who is “returning Forbes to its historical homeland” (now the holding is owned by a company from Hong Kong). Further investigation revealed that other people were behind the deal and that Russell just needed to negotiate the deal with regulators.

So who is buying Forbes Media Holdings?

As AIN.Capital learned from three unrelated sources, one of the initiators of the purchase was Russian businessman Magomed Musaev. He currently presents himself as a venture capitalist, technology entrepreneur, and someone who wants to do impact investing.

In 2017, he invested $20 million in Luminar, when meeting with Russell. For him, the deal turned out to be a success — after the IPO, he managed to take $270 million from the company.

Magomed also owns the Forbes brand in Russia, the publication continues to work there unchanged and is one of the few remaining in the country. Many other magazines left the country.

Buying Forbes Global is Musaev’s long-standing plan. He talked about it back in 2021. The main goal is to own a popular and well-known mass media that will allow to fix the reputation and move away from the status of a Russian entrepreneur with a dubious reputation and dealings with people like DST’s Yuri Milner: a Russian who is no longer completely Russian. For this purpose, Musaev launched other projects aimed at impact investments and ESG.

In the winter of 2022, Musaev talked about the idea of buying out the shares of Integrated Whale Media for his friends and acquaintances. He didn’t really hide such intentions. AIN.Capital’s sources confirmed this conversation.

As sources close to Musaev told AIN.Capital, it was Musaev who was behind the agreement with Russell — he was one of its initiators and one of those who was going to finance the American businessman. The same information was confirmed to Axios. One of AIN.Capital’s interlocutors claim that Musaev and Russell have had a trusting relationship since the investment round, so there is nothing surprising in the fact that the American agreed to such an agreement.

A person close to Musaev told AIN.Capital that he is actually the one buying Forbes Media Holdings.

Musaev worked tirelessly for the Internet to only write about him as a successful investor, philanthropist, and person who is interested in the impact and development of the planet. Nevertheless, he is called the son-in-law of the ex-head of Dagestan, he worked in Luzhkov City Hall, and he has several public and not so scandals behind him. And there is much less information about his past than about recent years when he started investing in American startups.

Musaev is not the only one behind the agreement. In total, Axios managed to find the figures for the distribution of $656 million, which is necessary for the deal. We will remind you that the entire holding is valued at $656 million. The money is coming from:

• Austin Russell pledging $10 million of his own funds. The entrepreneur will not sell Luminar shares to finance the deal, this was confirmed by the company, which is currently deeply unprofitable.
• The Indian Sun Group, which also has close ties with the Russian Federation, is ready to invest about $200-$300 million. Its top manager even spoke at a joint conference with Putin on the same stage. The head of the Sung Group, Semafor emphasizes, made a fortune in the Russian Federation, and still about 5% of the fund’s assets are related to the Russian Federation.
• Kenyan billionaire Julius Mwale — several tens of millions of dollars. Fortune is more than $1 billion.
• The GSV Fund will not invest but will help raise funds from potential investors.
• Another 8% remains with the current owner.

The publication also emphasizes that the fact of the purchase of the Forbes Holdings or any other by foreign citizens or companies is not surprising. More questions are raised by the fact that an American businessman is used for the deal, covering with him a cohort of rather dubious investors whose money is connected to the Russian Federation.

The agreement is still not signed, although it has been announced. If Russell does not close it within the next few months, he will be forced to pay $35 million in damages.

UPD: Businessman from Kazakhstan Bulat Utemuratov has been deleted from the article as a participant in the acquisition. Axios updated the article with this statement: After this story was published, a spokesperson for Utemuratov told Axios that he had been involved in a previous bid for Forbes but is not now a participant in the newest deal effort.

• As Bachynskyi said, Euvic intends to build a permanent presence in Ukraine in the coming years by acquiring Ukrainian IT companies with a size of about 100 specialists.
• The plans also include the construction of service centers in Ukraine, as well as the development of business centers in the Scandinavian and American markets, in Dubai and Great Britain.
• Although the acquisition strategy involves a gradual buyout of the controlling stake, Exoft will further have full operational autonomy.
• The buying of Exoft is the first step on the way to Euvic Group’s foreign expansion. The company is intensively working on the international diversification of its team and seeks to strengthen its presence in the countries of Eastern Europe.

“Exoft has a strong position in the software development market and a team of highly qualified employees. I hope that Exoft’s entry into the Euvic Group will allow both parties to grow and significantly increase efficiency. Yes, we are aware of the risks associated with doing business in the current situation in Ukraine, but we also see opportunities in this. The IT industry, despite everything, remains stable. We believe that the war will end, and we want to support our partners in further development,”

comments Lukasz Chernetski, Vice President of Euvic.

• Euvic Group has been operating on the Polish market for 17 years. The company specializes in providing IT services in Poland and some European countries.
• Exoft is a Ukrainian company with a development center in Lviv, which employs up to 100 IT specialists. The main specialization is the development of desktop, web, and mobile software using C#, .NET MVC Web API, ASP.NET, WPF, WCF technologies. The company operates in more than 24 foreign markets.

• Founded in 2016 bValue Fund is a specialized growth equity investment firm that partners with tech and tech-enabled businesses in Central and Eastern Europe. The Fund is investing across two distinctive strategies, seed and growth.
• bValue manages €100 million growth equity fund, investing €5-15 million in a single investment. The firm also manages €20 million in seed funds and seeded over 30 companies such as: noo.ma, Tidio, Spin.ai, MoreGrowth, YourKaya, Senuto, Shoplo, Fluentbe, PushPushGo.
• Renters.pl was launched in 2018 and today offers over 2,000 rental apartments in the largest Polish cities and tourist spots. It offers its apartments base through Airbnb, Booking, or Expedia as well as its own booking platforms. Renters.pl was ranked 36th among the top 50 largest short-term rental operators in the world in the global Top Property Managers ranking in 2021 and 2022.

“I sincerely congratulate Enterprise Investors on this investment. Renters.pl seems to be a perfect platform candidate to consolidate a fragmented, fast-growing and highly acquisitive market with many adjacent and complementary business ideas,”

said bValue Fund managing partner Maciej Balsewicz.

• bValue Fund helped Renters.pl to set up corporate governance and management reporting, structure internal processes, and implement IT systems. The Fund fully exits the investment with a solid return of 8.0x on money invested. 

• Founded in 2011 by Luca Puccioni, Lucjan Samulowski, Mariusz Gralewski, Docplanner is a booking platform and management software provider for doctors. In the Polish market, the platform is best known as ZnanyLekarz. In September 2021, DocPlanner got unicorn status, raising a total of $140.5 million in funding.
• In August 2022, the company acquired Brazilian software developer Feegow. As a result of the deal, DocPlanner expanded its offer with Feegow’s medical facility management tool. Now, it made its first acquisition on the Polish market — MyDr.
• Currently, MyDr cooperates with 47,000 doctors, and almost 2 million visits are arranged monthly via the website. The company describes itself as the leader on the medical information market in Poland. It provides pharmacists and patients with comprehensive data on all medicinal products available on the Polish market, as well as several other products.
• MyDr is the owner of three brands. The first of them is EDM, a system for managing medical facilities, the second is Dr100, a software for running dental offices and clinics. The third brand is drNews, an information system for healthcare facilities.
• The acquisition is part of Docplanner’s expansion plans implementation. Right now, the service is already available in 13 countries.

• Founded in 2018 by Sebastian Frick, AutoVex is the leading used car C2B auction marketplace in Finland. It allows consumers to get the best offers for their used car via a digitally managed auction directed exclusively towards car dealers. The platform provides offers from over 800 Finnish car dealers.
• For car dealers, AutoVex offers a convenient and efficient way to source high-quality used cars. To date, close to 20,000 cars have been sold through the platform amounting to a total gross merchandise value of around €350 million. The company currently employs around 20 people in Helsinki.

“We are excited to include AutoVex in our family of digital brands, and look forward to supporting the company’s growth and further solidifying its market position in Finland. As well as bringing our expertise from building world leading marketplaces to the company, we are confident that the employees of AutoVex have experience and knowledge that we can learn from and utilise to further strengthen our Motor vertical,”

Robin Suwe, SVP Mobility in Nordic Marketplaces, says.

• Schibsted is a Scandinavian media group with approximately 6,900 employees spread across 29 countries. Already, the group has several leading brands in the Motor vertical across the Nordics.
• With the acquisition of AutoVex, it is further building on its expertise and expanding its offering in Finland.