It was found out that two bankers – Yurii Khitrov and Alexander Volovnik – are the owners of Orion Express satellite operator, according to CNews.
This information was confirmed by Kirill Makhnovskii, the general director of Orion Express. He also said that Khitrov directly owns his share, and Alexander Volovnik – via another structures. Makhnovkii did not give any comments on the size of the owners’ shares.
According to Kontur.Fokus database, Yuri Khitrov owns a share of 50 %. Also, 19 % belong to Soiuz STC, the owner is Volovnik and the company formally belongs to his daughter. 31 % are owned by Tehnoexpress, JSC – at the moment, the organization is being prepared for liquidation. Shares of Soiuz STC and Tehnoexpress are currently pledged to the Fondservicebank that is controlled by Volovnik. So, he is the direct owner of 50 % share of Orion Express.
Thus, we can assume that Khitrov and Volovnik own Orion Express operator in equal shares.
According to our information, Orion Express together with Er-Telecom and MTS takes third place on the scale of the subscriber base among all pay-TV operators in Russia. At the moment, the operator serves 2.9 million subscribers.
As a reminder, Orion representatives recently told about its development during the last 9 months.