Russian internet investor Digital Sky Technologies’ online buy-up is continuing ahead of its possible 2011 IPO.
It’s acquiring the 20 percent of social network Odnoklassniki.ru it does not already own from founder Albert Popkov, Vedomosti reports (via Quintura).
The deal has been cleared by Russia’s Federation Antimonopoly Service (here) on the grounds it will not adversely lead to market concentration.
An analyst quoted by Vedmosti estimates the deal to be worth $14 to $28 million to Popkov.
The site is beginning to make advertising tick. It more than doubled 2009 annual revenue to 1.54 billion rubles ($48.6 million) from 2008, leading to 9.4 times higher net profit of 39 million rubles ($1.6 million).
Background…
Digital Sky spent a reported $400 million buying up Facebook stock last year, and followed up that investment by leading huge rounds at what are arguably the two hottest internet startups right now, Zynga and Groupon. It also beat out several other bidders to buy IM service ICQ from AOL (NYSE: AOL) for $187.5 million in late April.
South Africa’s outward-looking Naspers last month took a 28.7 percent stake in DST in return for giving it $388 million and 39.3 percent of Mail.ru. Naspers already owned 30 percent of China