Deals
VTB Buys $2.5 Billion Magnit Stake as Founding Owner Quits
- Billionaire Galitskiy to step down as CEO, replaced by CFO
- VTB bought stake at discount, triggering decline in shares
A Magnit hypermarket in Krasnodar, Russia.
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
This article is for subscribers only.
State-controlled VTB Group is buying 29% of Magnit PJSC from billionaire Sergey Galitskiy, who said investors don’t trust his vision for Russia’s second-largest food retailer after its share price plunged in the past year.
Galitskiy will quit as chief executive officer after selling 138 billion rubles ($2.5 billion) of shares to VTB, Magnit said in a regulatory filing. At 4,660.91 rubles a share, that implies a discount of almost 4 percent to the previous close. Magnit dropped as much as 7 percent in Moscow trading on Friday, to the lowest since 2012.