Oleg Tinkov sells his brewpub chain
Oleg Tinkoff, whose middle name must be “mad, bad and dangerous to know”, has been notorious for his quirky approach to doing business. He once said in an interview that “I lose interest in whatever doesn’t feel like a challenge anymore. When a thing doesn’t excite me, I simply stop doing it, and start looking for a new breakthrough.”
Given his self-professed flightiness, it is somewhat remarkable that he stuck to his brewpub business for over a decade.
In the early years of this decade, his St Petersburg brewpub was the place where Russia’s jeunesse dorée (“golden youth”) and the shadier-coloured types liked to mingle. I remember that upon entering, patrons were asked to leave their weapons with the cloakroom assistant and not to take photos inside as many of Tinkoff’s guests (because of their business dealings) preferred anonymity to publicity.
Things have changed a lot since then. If you visited Tinkoff’s this summer, you would have noticed that no cloakroom staff was there to assist you with your armoury. Actually, there were hardly any guests inside, apart from tourists and the odd Russian beer lover.
It is not that St Petersburg’s ultra-rich elite has fallen on hard times. Posh restaurants near-by were still heaving with business, judging from the black limousines cum driver/bodyguard parked outside.
I could not help thinking that Tinkoff’s brewpub must have been deserted by Russia’s new middle class, who began frequenting the restaurant once the affluent scenesters had bestowed their favours onto another partying hot spot.
But when even the “wannabe rich” could no longer afford a visit to Tinkoff’s for a beer and food, Mr Tinkov must have known that his time was up.
Mr Tinkov announced his plans to sell his restaurant business in August 2009. “My restaurant business is 11 years old now. I’m bored with it,” Mr Tinkov said via his Twitter account. “I want to sell my share – [which equals] approximately 70 percent, including the brand name.”
Mint Capital, a private equity outfit, declined to disclose the fee for the chain of ten restaurant micro-breweries which are located in Russia’s largest cities.
Last year, Mint Capital invested USD 10 million in exchange for a 25 percent stake in Tinkoff Restaurants, it was reported. Well aware of Mr Tinkov’s declining interest, the fund brought in a new management team and eventually decided to buy out the entire restaurant business.
Mr Tinkov told local media that he finally decided to leave because of differences of opinion with his partners. He declined to discuss the exact terms of the deal, saying he was not at liberty to discuss the sale and would in any event be “ashamed” to disclose the sum.
“Imagine, they bought 25 percent for USD 10 million in 2008, and now they bought 75 percent for an even smaller amount,” he said. “Well, I don’t think that’s a big problem. It makes no difference to me, whether I’ve got a million more or a million less in my pocket. But it wasn’t a super deal,” Mr Tinkov reportedly said.
Mint Capital is a private equity fund set up in 2001 to make investments in rapidly growing companies in Russia.
Oleg Tinkov started his business career in 1993 with a chain of consumer electronics stores, Tekhnoshok in St. Petersburg, that he sold for USD 7 million in 1997 according to Moscow media. He opened the first Tinkoff beer restaurant in St. Petersburg in 1998. Separately, Mr Tinkov founded a frozen foods business Darya and a brewery. In 2002, Darya was sold for some USD 25 million as Mr Tinkov decided to focus on his brewery and restaurant businesses. In 2005, the brewery business, excluding Tinkoff Restaurants was sold to InBev. Mr Tinkov would have sold the restaurants to InBev too had they wanted them. In early 2006, Oleg Tinkov started a consumer credit card banking business, Tinkoff Credit Systems, in which Goldman Sachs has a 15 percent stake.
