Former VK chief Dobrodeev heads up USM Telecom

MOSCOW. Feb 9 (Interfax) - Boris Dobrodeev, who in December left his position as head of Internet holding VK (formerly Mail.ru Group), has been appointed CEO of USM Telecom LLC (a subsidiary of Alisher Usmanov's USM holding), according to the SPARK-Interfax information system.

USM Telecom was previously headed by Vladimir Streshinsky. It is specified that the change of CEO at USM Telecom took place on February 8.

In December, Dobrodeev left the position of VK CEO, which he had held since October 2016. He was succeeded by Vladimir Kiriyenko, who had previously worked as first vice president of Rostelecom .

The change in the Internet holding company's leadership came after a change in the shareholding structure of MF Technologies (MFT), which controls 57.3% of VK's voting shares. At the end of last year, USM and Sberbank left MFT as shareholders and SOGAZ and Gazprom-Media Holding became the new co-owners of the company.

SOGAZ acquired 45% of MFT from PJSC Megafon , part of USM's asset portfolio. Gazprombank (GPB) acquired 36% of MFT from Sberbank and 9% directly from USM. GPB made the entire acquired stake a contribution to the assets of Gazprom-Media Holding. Rostec State Corporation is the owner of another 10% of MFT.

In addition to MFT, VK shareholders also include Naspers entity structure Prosus, Alibaba Group, and Tencent.

Before his appointment as CEO of VK, Dobrodeeev served as the company's director of strategy and development since 2014 and as CEO of the social network VKontakte. In 2013-2014, he was deputy general director of VKontakte. Before joining the Internet company, Dobrodeyev was the head of the Internet asset management department at USM Advisors from 2012 to 2014.