Owners of perfume and cosmetics retailer Rive Gauche plan to sell business - media

MOSCOW. Aug 25 (Interfax) - The owners of the perfume and cosmetics retailer Rive Gauche are planning to sell the business, and structures of Alexei Mordashov's Severgroup are the main contender for the asset, the Kommersant newspaper said, citing sources.

According to the publication's sources, all current co-owners (including the family of the former co-owner of Yulmart, August Meyer) will exit Rive Gauche, except for Larisa Karaban, who may retain a stake.

The deal is in its final stage and will be closed soon, one of the newspaper's sources said. Severgroup declined to comment, and Rive Gauche did not respond to the publication's questions.

Mikhail Burmistrov, the general director of Infoline-Analytics, estimates the value of the chain's business at 5 billion to 6 billion rubles.

Severgroup owns a number of assets in retail, including the Lenta hypermarket chain, the online retailer Utkonos, and the Ulybka Radugi chain of cosmetics and home goods stores.

Rive Gauche was founded in 1995 by former spouses Pavel and Larisa Karaban. The chain is engaged in the distribution and sale of perfumes and cosmetics, mainly premium ones (costing more than 4,000 rubles). Under the Rive Gauche brand, more than 250 stores operate in 88 cities of Russia. According to Infoline, it is the fifth largest perfume and cosmetics retailer in Russia by turnover.

The operating company of Rive Gauche is Aromalyuks LLC. Its revenue, according to SPARK data, fell 6% year-on-year in 2024, to 37.4 billion rubles, while the net loss for the year increased almost threefold to 1.5 billion rubles. Payables at the end of 2024 amounted to 5.6 billion rubles.

Currently, 100% of the shares in Aromalyuks are owned by Cyprus's Rive Gauche Group Ltd. In 2021, its main owner was Inna Meyer (51%). Another 25% belonged to Panamanian Octapan Investments S.A., whose beneficiaries are considered to be Pavel and Larisa Karaban. A total of 24% was controlled by Lenka Investments Ltd, previously associated with the founder of Finstar Financial Group, Oleg Boyko.

Inna Meyer is the wife of August Meyer, the former co-owner of the Yulmart network. Between 2001 and 2011, the entrepreneur was the main owner of Lenta, which came under the control of Mordashov's structures in 2019. From 2012 to 2023, Meyer participated in the development of the Ulybka Radugi chain. The deal for its purchase by Lenta was closed last year.

An agreement on the sale of Rive Gauche was reached during discussions on the deal for Ulybka Radugi, one of Kommersant's sources in the retail market said.