The most popular social network in Russia has entered the stage of a management crisis, and there is no doubt about it anymore. The situation is aggravated by the fact that the conflict between shareholders and management has gone beyond the company and became public. As a result, it has become increasingly common to assume that the founder of the social network, Pavel Durov, may be driven out of the company in disgrace.
To begin, we recall the chronology of events. In April of this year, a consortium of investors led by United Capital Partners (UCP) Ilya Scherbovich bought a 48 percent stake in VKontakte, which previously belonged to entrepreneurs Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev. Another 39.9% of the company belongs to Mail.ru Group, which is controlled by billionaire Alisher Usmanov. Pavel Durov himself currently owns a 12.5% stake in VKontakte, which significantly binds his hands in terms of decision making.
Minority positions of a top manager can turn the head of a company into a “lame duck” in the event of possible conflicts with those who have a larger share of shares. It was this situation that occurred when the American company Durov Digital Fortress implemented its debut project - the Telegram mobile application.
Some VKontakte engineers were engaged in the development of a mobile messenger, which could not but cause a bewilderment of the board of directors. And really: why should these specialists spend their working time on developing a product that does not have any formal relation to the social network, just because the side project is also controlled by Pavel Durov?
Shareholders demanded clarification from Durov and asked him to substantiate the fact of the transfer of VKontakte engineers to a project that is in no way connected with the main business. As a result, employees with the scandal were expelled from the company, and the conflict in the top of the top only escalated. From the position of UCP, everything looks as follows: for two months, shareholders tried to get Durov to clarify what kind of intellectual property “VKontakte” is used to create Telegram, and whether there is a conflict of interest in this situation. Instead, Durov began to devote even less time to his main child, and did not react to requests from the board of directors.
Durov himself claims that these statements are untrue, and a detailed explanation was sent to them promptly and in two languages - Russian and English. In this regard, he even threatened the UCP with a lawsuit on defamation charges under Article 128.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. At the same time, Durov notes that the persecution began even long before the release of the Telegram messenger. Here is a comment he voiced in an interview with Hopes & Fears:
“The current round of the UCP attack began less than a month and a half ago after the release of the Telegram application. Before that, the UCP had threatened me with a court, including a criminal one, on other issues. Lawyers who threatened me with prosecution were brought to the UCP back in April of this year, which is documented. ”
Investors, apparently, are even more radical than they might seem. In an interview with Forbes magazine, they stated that they did not exclude the possibility of Pavel Durov being dismissed from his post as the head of VKontakte:
“There are other talented guys in the company and on the market who will be interested in developing VKontakte.” Perhaps some of them will head the company in the near future. ”
Durov had time to react to this attack and stated that he, in turn, considers it more appropriate to change the composition of shareholders. However, no matter how omnipotent he considers himself, it hardly makes sense to hope that a brazen loner will win the battle against the bigwigs of business. Black turtleneck and unwillingness to communicate with the press - this is hardly enough to turn into Steve Jobs, who in the position of CEO actually had full power in the entire company and could, at his discretion, carry out changes in the board of directors of Apple.
Based on Hopes & Fears and Forbes
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