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Spain’s Dia grocery store chain, which is majority-owned by Mikhail Fridman’s LetterOne funding agency, insisted Tuesday it could not be affected by the EU’s blacklisting of the billionaire over Russia’s Ukraine invasion.
In a press release revealed on Monday night time, the group stated it was not managed by the Russian oligarch, simply hours after his identify was added to the European Union’s sanctions blacklist of allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Dia stated though it was 78 % owned by LetterOne Funding Holdings SA (LIHS), “no particular person shareholder controls the LIHS” — neither Fridman nor Petr Aven, who co-founded the Luxembourg-based funding firm and has additionally been hit by EU sanctions.
“Accordingly, the agency considers it’s not affected in any manner, both immediately or not directly (by the aforementioned people who don’t management LIHS or, due to this fact, Dia), by the brand new package deal of sanctions.”
In a letter to his LetterOne staff, the Ukraine-born financier — certainly one of Russia’s richest males — instructed employees that “conflict can by no means be the reply” and known as for the “bloodshed” to finish, the corporate instructed AFP on Sunday.
“This disaster will price lives and injury two nations who’ve been brothers for a whole bunch of years,” he wrote.
Born right into a Jewish household within the western Ukrainian metropolis of Lviv in 1964, Fridman studied in Moscow then went on to construct an unlimited enterprise empire encompassing the whole lot from oil and fuel to banking, telecoms and distribution.
He divides his time between London and Moscow and Forbes estimates his fortune at $15.5 billion.
Though he has cultivated robust ties to Putin’s administration, he has by no means develop into a part of the president’s interior circle.
LetterOne first purchased into Dia in 2017, launching a hostile takeover bid two years later.
The Spanish chain, which operates practically 6,000 supermarkets in Spain, Portugal, Argentina and Brazil, posted a turnover of 6.64 billion euros ($7.4 billion) final 12 months, the group stated on Tuesday, giving a web loss determine of 257.3 million euros ($287 million).
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