RBC: Luxembourg froze shares of the first “unicorn” “Rosnano” at the suit of ex-shareholders of Yukos

The Luxembourg court seized the shares of OCSiAl, owned by Rosnano, at the suit of the former owners of Yukos, sources told RBC. The value of the shares of the Russian company in 2021 exceeded $300 million. OCSiAl, the world’s largest producer of graphene nanotubes, in 2019 the company became a “unicorn” (a startup whose capitalization in a short time exceeded $1 billion).

Interim measures were imposed by the court at the end of 2022, and litigation is underway. According to RBC interlocutors, even before the court decision, Rosnano applied to law enforcement agencies with a request to take preventive measures to prevent the possible withdrawal of OCSiAl capacities from Russia and their transfer to other jurisdictions. However, “there were no such initiatives.” OCSiAl and Rosnano did not comment on the information.

OCSiAl was founded in 2010 in Novosibirsk by physicist Mikhail Predtechensky and businessmen Yuri Koropachinsky, Oleg Kirillov and Yuri Zelvensky. Rosnano invested $40 million in the project in 2014. For the first time, the startup became a “unicorn” in March 2019, when Alexander Mamut’s A&NN fund bought 0.5% of its shares from Rosnano for $5 million, valuing the entire company at $1 billion. After that, Rusnano was left with 17.3% of the shares (there are no later shares), and the founders – 47% and voting control. In 2021, OCSiAl attracted $100 million in investments from a pool of investors, the company was valued at $2 billion. At that time, Rusnano estimated its stake at $300 million.

Litigation on the claims of the ex-owners of Yukos has been going on since the beginning of the 2000s. According to the latest decisions of the court in The Hague, Russia must pay the plaintiffs $50 billion and interest (according to data for 2020, their volume was $7 billion).

Leonid Uvarchev