Today at 7:00 p.m. on TV Rain (an independent Russian TV channel), I’ll be debating Artemy Lebedev.
You can read about what it’s about and what caused it here. And here.
Since this has already turned into a "war of spreadsheets," it looks like the discussion will also touch on specific contracts and financial figures. Someone who comes to a debate waving around a sheet of paper with a table no one else can examine doesn’t look very convincing. So before the debate, I decided to publish a brief reference note on Artemy’s companies and their government contracts.
Nothing secret here. It all comes from databases like Kontur-Fokus and SPARK (Russian corporate records databases). It’s open data, and you can verify it yourself.
In the table, ownership stakes across the group of companies are given as percentages, and all amounts are in millions of rubles. For each company, it lists the ownership stakes, then annual revenue for 2013–2015, then annual profit for 2013–2015, and then the total value of recent government contracts (almost all of them dating to 2016).
In total: — the group’s turnover is stable, at just over 300 million rubles a year — 2013 ended with a profit of 125 million rubles, while 2014–2015 produced a combined loss of 382 million rubles, concentrated primarily in 2014 — more than 140 million rubles’ worth of government contracts have been identified (including with government bodies and outfits like Gazprom).
So, to repeat, based on open data and without counting any hidden contracts, government orders account for 20%.
It is visible quite plainly:
For example, the mysterious 117 million-ruble contract for "floor graphics in the metro," whose executor is unclear, is not included here.
Then, for greater accuracy, out of all 14 companies in the group, only the 7 in which Lebedev is formally a shareholder were kept in the analysis (the other 7 also operate under the SAL brand, but Artemy formally has no connection to them). Those 7 account for roughly one-third of revenue, half of the losses, and one-fifth of the government contracts.
So this is an established fact: Artemy really is a major government contractor (for a design studio), and a significant part of his business comes from government orders. In principle, taken in isolation, there is nothing wrong with that — but it cannot be denied.