Oleg Tinkov

In the past, he developed the Tekhnoshok chain of household appliances stores, the Darya frozen semi-finished products manufacturer, the Tinkoff brewing company and restaurant chain[6], as well as the Music Shock music store and the Shock Records record label.

Tinkov is fond of road cycling, has the category of a candidate for the master of sports of the USSR [7]. In 2005, he created the professional cycling team Tinkoff Restaurants, which later changed its name to Tinkoff Credit Systems and became the basis for the Russian Katyusha team[8][9]. From December 2013 to November 2016, he owned the Tinkoff cycling team[10][11].

According to Forbes, in the list of the richest businessmen in Russia in 2021, Tinkov took 32nd place with a fortune of $ 4.7 billion, in the list of the wealthiest people in the world - 608th place. In 2022, he dropped out of the global

Russian lists.

Biography

early years

Oleg Tinkov was born on December 25, 1967 in the village of Polysaevo, Leninsk-Kuznetsk district of the Kemerovo region in the family of a miner and a seamstress[15][16]. He graduated from school in Leninsk-Kuznetsky. After, in his own words, he worked at the Kirov mine and the Kuzbasselement plant [17] [18].

From the age of 12, Tinkov became interested in road cycling, first in the school cycling section, then in sections at enterprises. He won a number of competitions and in 1984 he received the title of candidate master of sports, but he did not receive an excellent mark in the corresponding subject in the certificate of secondary education [19]. During the sports camp, Tinkov first took up fartsovka, buying scarce goods in Central Asia and selling them in Leninsk-Kuznetsky [20]. The cyclist's career was interrupted by urgent military service: he did not get into the army sports club, but was sent to the border troops. In 1986-1988 he served in the Far East - in Nakhodka and Nikolaevsk-on-Amur[21][22].

Education

In 1988, Tinkov entered the Leningrad Mining Institute. An educational institution with a large number of foreign students opened up wide opportunities for trade. Oleg speculated in jeans, cosmetics and perfumes, black caviar and vodka[19]. He sold goods from Leningrad in Siberia, and from there he brought Japanese household appliances[23]. He took electrical appliances to Poland and returned from there with office equipment and consumables[24]. He was engaged in trade together with his future wife Rina Vosman and fellow students - Oleg Zherebtsov (later the founder of the Lenta chain of stores), Oleg Leonov (the future founder of the Dixy chain of stores) and Andrei Rogachev (the founder of the LEK and Pyaterochka companies) [25]. In the third year, Tinkov left the Mining Institute [26].

After selling his trading business, he took Sabbatical[en] and left for the United States in 1999, where he completed a six-month marketing program at the University of California at Berkeley[27][28].

A family

In 1989, while studying at the institute, Tinkov met his future wife, an Estonian Rina Valentinovna Vosman. The wedding took place in June 2009 - after 20 years of marriage [29]. Their daughter Daria studied at King's College London, and their sons Pavel and Roman studied at St Edward's School in Oxford.

Entrepreneurship

"Technoshock"

In 1993, Oleg Tinkov took up the wholesale trade of electronics from Singapore and, in order to simplify paperwork, opened the Petrosib limited liability partnership in St. Petersburg, and then the regional Petrosib-Kemerovo, Petrosib-Novosibirsk and Petrosib-Omsk and others. Goods arrived in St. Petersburg and from there were sent to the regions, where they were sold at a higher markup. Starting with calculators, he moved on to office equipment, televisions, VCRs, and even artificial flowers and trees. At first, Oleg himself flew to Singapore, then he began to use cargo transportation by air, and the turning point came when the Indian merchant Ashok Vasmani shipped him half a container of TVs on credit[30]. Tinkov switched to container transportation[31].

The decline in wholesale profits prompted Tinkov to open his own chain of stores. In 1994, Petrosib opened the first store under the Sony brand on Maly Prospekt of Vasilievsky Island in St. Petersburg. Soon - another one on Marata Street. Petrosib USA office opened in San Francisco. Success in retail prompted Tinkov to the idea of ​​uniting stores under a common name. Technoshock, which opened in 1995, offered expensive equipment, but was still popular. One of the first in Russia, Technoshock began to train sales consultants[32]. Sergio Gutsalenko, an American of Russian origin, became the president of the company. The network grew rapidly: by 1996, Technoshock had five stores in St. Petersburg, two each in Omsk and Kemerovo, and one in Novorossiysk. From 1995 to 1996, the turnover doubled and reached $40 million[33].

By 1997, Eldorado stores appeared in St. Petersburg, competition increased, and profitability decreased. In 1997, Oleg Tinkov sold the company to management, and a year later it was acquired by Simtex. Oleg left Technoshock with $7 million, which he invested in the dumpling business[27].

"Music Shock"

In parallel with Technoshock, in 1996 Tinkov opened the Music Shock chain of music stores. Philip Kirkorov and Alla Pugacheva performed at the opening of the first "Music Shock", the second - Zhanna Aguzarova[34].

Together with Ilya Bortnyuk, he launched the Shock Records record label. The label released the debut albums of the groups "Bricks" and "Leningrad", a symphony by Vladimir Dashkevich based on his music for the film "Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson", the album "Invisible Man" by the group "Knife for Frau Müller". "Music Shock" published a 320-page book "Viktor Tsoi", compiled by Victor's widow Maryana Tsoi and musician of the first composition of the Kino group Alexei Rybin.

In 1998 "Music Shock" was sold to the Moscow company Gala Records[35].

"Daria"

Under the trademark "Daria", named after

Tinkoff BANK

On November 18, 2005, on Necker Island[en], owned by billionaire Richard Branson, Oleg Tinkov presented a project for the future bank[52][53]. Boston Consulting Group, on the instructions of Tinkov, evaluated the business model he proposed and recognized the idea of ​​a bank with only remote services implemented in the Russian market. Tinkov acquired the Moscow Himmashbank for the sake of a banking license and in November 2006 opened the Tinkoff Credit Systems bank. In the new project, he invested 70 million dollars out of 80 earned in the beer business. In the summer of 2007, the bank was headed by the former head of VISA International in Russia, Oliver Hughes[54][55].

In 2007, Goldman Sachs investment bank became a co-owner of TCS, in 2008 - Vostok Nafta, in 2012 - Baring Vostok and Horizon Capital[55][56]. For a long time, the bank did not attract deposits and used its own capital to issue loans[57]. In the absence of its own network of branches and ATMs, marketing has always been the main item of expenditure, the costs of which were easier to manage. Thanks to this, the bank, against the backdrop of rapid growth, has never in its history shown a net loss at the end of the year[58].

In October 2013, the parent structure of the TCS Group bank entered the London Stock Exchange. The bank was positioned as a technology company, and as a result, during the IPO, investors valued it at $3.2 billion with a multiplier of six capitals. Listing on the exchange was, according to Forbes, one of the largest Russian transactions in 2013. Tinkov earned $200 million for his 9.6% stake, leaving him with 50.9% of the bank worth $1.6 billion[59][60][61]. At the same time, for the first time, he entered the world rating of billionaires according to Forbes (1210th place)[13][62].

After the IPO, Tinkov gradually moved away from the operational management of the bank, leaving behind the role of a "visionary"[63][64]. The bank diversified its business: after attracting deposits from individuals, insurance appeared, a direction for small and medium-sized businesses, a mobile operator, and then a brokerage business and private banking for wealthy clients were opened[65]. The expansion of the business was also reflected in the name - in 2015, Tinkoff Credit Systems changed its name to Tinkoff Bank[61]. At the end of 2019, the share of areas not related to lending (transactional, commission business and insurance) in total revenue exceeded 36%[58][65].

After the news of his illness, Tinkov initiated the transfer of all his 40.4% shares to a family trust in the fall of 2019. In April 2020, he stepped down as head of the bank's board of directors. In December of the same, he sold a 5.3% stake in TCS Group for $325 million in order to use the proceeds to launch a charitable foundation and settle tax claims in the United States[65].

In September 2020, TCS Group and Yandex announced that they had previously agreed on a deal, as a result of which Yandex could buy up to 100% of TCS Group for $5.5 billion and pay for them in cash and its own shares. In October, the bank withdrew from the negotiations, as Tinkov was not satisfied with either the price or the loss of the bank's autonomy within the Yandex structure[65][66][67].

In January 2021, the Tinkov family trust converted its class B preferred shares, which have 10 votes, into class A common shares. Thus, the conversion of TCS Group shares equalized Tinkov's rights with the rest of the shareholders and led to a decrease in the voting share from 84% to 35% [68]. The capitalization of the bank in August 2021 reached $20 billion[58].

By the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Tinkov family owned 35.1% of TCS Group through the Swiss trust Rigi (another 6.5% was owned by the bank's management, the remaining 58.4% was traded on the stock exchange[69]). According to Deloitte, the bank was "one of the three largest banks in Russia in terms of the number of active clients" and at the beginning of February was ranked 12th in the Russian banking system in terms of assets (1.27 trillion rubles). Against the backdrop of a fall in the stock market, by the beginning of March 2022, Tinkov dropped out of the number of dollar billionaires. According to media reports, he was looking for potential buyers for a stake in the bank even before the military campaign, but with its start and inclusion in the UK sanctions list, he decided to speed up the exit from Russian assets and was ready to sell his stake for several hundred million dollars. At the end of April, Vladimir Potanin's Interros bought Tinkov's share for an amount not disclosed by the parties. Tinkov himself, in public comments, linked the sale of shares with a serious discount to his anti-war position and alleged pressure from the authorities[12][58][70][71][72].

US tax prosecution

Oleg Tinkov has been a US citizen since 1996 and renounced his citizenship on October 28, 2013, three days after the IPO and the listing of Tinkoff Bank on the NASDAQ exchange. The law requires wealthy former Americans to pay an expatriation tax of up to 23.8% of the value of all property, as if it were sold at market price the day before renunciation. Thus, taking into account the value of the block of shares of public TCS Group Holding, Tinkov at the time of renunciation of citizenship owned assets of more than $1 billion. At the same time, when submitting documents, he indicated his annual income of $205 thousand and a general condition of $300 thousand. In September In 2019, a California court accused Tinkov of tax evasion, the accuser was the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). On February 27, 2020, the same California court issued an arrest warrant for Tinkov. On the same day, he was detained in London and, after presenting a warrant, was released under house arrest on bail of £20 million, while his Russian and Cypriot passports were confiscated[65][73][74].

On March 6, Tinkov announced that he had been fighting leukemia since October. The Westminster Magistrates Court in London, given the severity of the disease, several times postponed extradition hearings to the United States[65]. In September 2021, Tinkov agreed with the US Department of Justice to settle tax claims. In October, the court approved a settlement agreement that provided for the payment of $ 509 million - for her, Tinkov used the dividends accumulated over several years and funds from the sale of part of the shares at the end of 2020[75][76]. In an interview with Yuri Dud in May 2022, Tinkov said that he had not paid the due taxes at the time, because he had not consulted with a lawyer, and stated that the verdict was influenced by the fact that Judge John Tygar[en] took into account Tinkov's struggle with leukemia [77].

Illness and philanthropy

Leukemia

In October 2019, Tinkov was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in Moscow, which was confirmed during an examination in Berlin. Then he started chemotherapy. Tinkov publicly announced his illness on March 6, 2020. By the end of June, after three courses of chemotherapy, German doctors managed to bring him into a state of remission, by that time Tinkov had suffered two sepsis and had been ill with coronavirus.

Tinkoff PRO team (Tinkoff cycling team)

In December 2013, Oleg Tinkov, through the management company Tinkoff Sport A/C, bought a team from former cyclist Bjarne Riis, sponsored by Tinkoff Credit Systems since 2012[10].

Tinkoff and Katyusha were the only Russian teams at that time to compete in the UCI World Tour[109][110]. The cyclists of the team have repeatedly won the stages of the prestigious Grand Tour: in particular, Alberto Contador became the winner of the Vuelta a España and the Giro d'Italia, and Peter Sagan twice won the green jersey of the best sprinter in the Tour de France.

Oleg Tinkov participated in training along with his athletes and accompanied the team to competitions[111][112]. In honor of Contador's victory at the 2015 Giro d'Italia, he dyed his hair a victorious pink[113].

Tinkov has repeatedly criticized professional cycling for bureaucracy and an outdated sponsorship model[114][115][116]. He became one of the shareholders of the Velon project - an initiative of the World Tour teams to develop professional cycling, organize more spectacular competitions, protect the interests of sponsors and team owners[117]. Tinkov also advocated a Grand Tour schedule that would allow the top riders to compete on each during the season. In 2014, he offered the captain of Tinkoff-Saxo Alberto Contador and his rivals Chris Frum, who plays for Sky Procycling, and Vincenzo Nibali from Astana Pro Team, 1 million euros each for performance at all three major stage races in the world[118].

Since 2016, the cycling team has been running as Tinkoff, as Saxo Bank decided not to renew the sponsorship beyond 2015[119]. At the end of 2015, he announced that at the end of the 2016 season he would retire from cycling and sell the team. As the only title sponsor, Tinkov spent about 20 million euros a year on the maintenance of the team, and for all the time, together with the bank, he invested about 50 million euros in it. In addition to the increased financial burden, he cited depleted branding potential for the bank, unprofitable cycling for teams, lack of reforms in the sport, as well as the protracted conflict between the International Cycling Union and the Amorí Sports Organization, among the reasons. At the end of the season, the team took second place and was finally disbanded in November 2016[11][120][121].

La Datcha

In 2016, Oleg Tinkov launched La Datcha, a service for renting holiday homes. According to him, he builds housing for himself in places of interest to him, but rents out houses when he does not use them[53][122].

The first two luxury chalets opened in the French Alps in June 2016: one in the ski resort of Courchevel and the other in Val Thorens[53][123]. In 2017, a fishing base was added in the Volga Delta near Astrakhan[122], in 2018, after reconstruction, a palazzo in Forte dei Marmi was opened for guests with a private beach and a 28-meter yacht Pershing 9X[124][125]. Since 2019, guests have been hosting a villa in the Mexican Cabo San Lucas[126]. Tinkov also considered the idea of ​​building a hotel and recreation complex in Kamchatka, but abandoned it due to organizational difficulties[122][127]. In May 2022, Oleg Tinkov announced that he had sold all Russian facilities of La Datcha[77].

In 2016, Tinkov became the first customer for the explorer superyacht SeaXplorer. The yacht can reach speeds of up to 14.5 knots (approximately 26.9 km / h) and sail over distances of 6,000 nautical miles (11.1 thousand km). Thanks to the ice class C1, La Datcha can enter ice several tens of centimeters thick. The 77-meter six-deck vessel with a total displacement of 2560 tons is designed for 12 guests and 25 crew members. The stock of provisions and fuel allows you to be in autonomous navigation for up to 40 days. The yacht is equipped in accordance with the wishes of the owner: it has two helipads, snowmobiles and a submarine. The yacht was built by the Dutch shipyard Amel[en]. The ship was launched in June 2020, tested at sea in September and was handed over to the customer in November of the same year. Immediately after that, La Datcha went on a world tour. The yacht cost Tinkov more than €100 million, he planned to spend up to 20 weeks a year on it, and the rest of the time to rent 740 thousand euros per week[125][128][129][130][131]. In May 2022, Tinkov admitted that he could sell the yacht[132].

Sanctions

US Treasury Report

In January 2018, he was included in the "Kremlin report" of the US Treasury - a list of 210 officials, politicians and businessmen who, according to the authors of the report, are close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The report was prepared under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Bill (CAATSA). The list of included businessmen completely coincided with the list of the richest people in Russia according to Forbes. As noted by the US Department of the Treasury, this list is not a sanction list and no restrictions are automatically imposed against its defendants[133][134].

UK sanctions

Since March 24, 2022, in connection with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the British authorities have included Oleg Tinkov, along with 32 other Russian individuals, in the sanctions list, which implies freezing assets in the country and transport restrictions. In May, Tinkov, in an interview with Yuri Dudyu, called the asset freeze by the UK a technical and bureaucratic mistake, since he does not have accounts and assets in the country, and expressed the hope that the British authorities would “sort it out” and cancel the decision[132][135].

Other

public position

On February 28, 2022, Tinkov spoke out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine: “Now innocent people are dying in Ukraine, every day, this is unthinkable and unacceptable! States should spend money on treating people, on research to defeat cancer, and not on war. We are against this war!”[136]. In April and May, Tinkov wrote a number of sharp anti-war posts, expressing a desire to help refugees from Ukraine and the wounded in Russia[137][138].

Tinkov's public statements were widely covered in the press. The bank, in turn, said that Tinkov's words were his "personal opinion", emphasizing that the businessman had not been involved in the management of the credit institution for many years. Already after the sale of a stake in the bank, in an interview with the New York Times and Yuri Dudyu, Tinkov said that after his criticism, the management of the bank was contacted by the presidential administration[58][139].

Attitude towards sports

In addition to cycling, in the early 2000s, Tinkov took up freeride, which he calls in his autobiography "one of the most life-threatening sports." Later, he became interested in heli-skiing - descending along untouched snowy slopes, to which a helicopter drives up. Also in January 2019, he skied and cycled 50 km to the South Pole[128].

In an interview with Yuri Dud in 2014, Oleg Tinkov said that he had a normal attitude towards football and highly appreciated Western football, especially the playoffs of the Champions League, but spoke harshly about Russian football players[21]. By this he explained his unwillingness to personally finance domestic football. However, in the 2020/2021 and 2021/2022 seasons, Tinkoff Bank became the sponsor of the Russian Premier League[140][141].

Publications

From 2007 to 2010, the entrepreneur was a columnist for the Finance magazine[142][143]. Since 2010, the editor-in-chief of the magazine, Oleg Anisimov, went to work at Tinkov's bank and worked with him on the program "Business Secrets with Oleg Tinkov" on the Internet channel Russia.ru[144][145]. After a two year!