UFG set to close $225m private equity fund

By Andrei Skvarsky

Russia's UFG Asset Management plans to close its latest private equity fund within days and has already invested nearly half of the fund's money, according to Charlie Ryan, a co-founder of the company and its current chairman.

UFG has invested a $100m share of the fund's $225m, Ryan told Russian business daily Vedomosti yesterday. It has invested some of the money into Russian Internet search engine Yandex and bought Rising Star Media, the company running the Kinostar chain of cinemas. The success of the film “Avatar” has made the latter deal a highly lucrative project, Ryan said.

The rest of the $100m went into Russkiye Bashni, a new Russian company that plans to build telecommunication towers and lease them to mobile operators, and into Enforta, a Russian telecommunications operator most of whose customers are medium-sized businesses in the provinces.

Ryan, who recently severed ties with Deutsche Bank,  oversees all of UFG's private equity business following the death of his partner Boris Fedorov, says the company mainly seeks controlling stakes in firms it invests in though its share in Yandex is tiny.

By Andrei Skvarsky Russia's UFG Asset Management plans to close its latest private equity fund within days and has already invested nearly half of the fund's money, according to Charlie Ryan, a co-founder of the company and its current chairman. UFG has invested a $100m share of the fund's $225m, Ryan told Russian business daily Vedomosti ...