Armada (company)

The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the company is German Kaplun ^{[3] [4]} .

As of October 2014, the company had three CEOs ^[5] : Igor Gorbatov ^[6] , Andrey Voznyak ^[7] and Vitaly Podolsky ^[8] . Since September 2016, a new CEO Vladimir Chekalkin has been appointed. http://www.cnews.ru/news/top/2016-09-20_v_armade_naznachen_novyj_gendirektorpredydushchij

April 24, 2007 the general meeting of shareholders of RBC. Information Systems ” approved the decision of the company’s board of directors to separate the IT business into an independent structure. Until 2007, the company operated under the brand name RBC Soft. At the time of creation, the Armada group included RBC Soft and Helios IT-Operator. In June 2007, Armada reached an agreement to acquire a controlling stake in PM Expert , a company specializing in project management services in Russia.

On July 31, 2007, Armada placed shares on the Russian MICEX and RTS stock exchanges. For 2 million ordinary shares of Armada, investors paid 760 million rubles. The company's capitalization at the time of placement amounted to 4.56 billion rubles (about $ 179 million). The funds raised as a result of the IPO were directed to business development and new acquisitions.

In September 2007, the company acquired for $ 12.3 million a controlling stake (55%) in Soyuzinform, which operates in the IT outsourcing market. .

In October 2007, Armada acquired a 51% stake in United Trading Systems LLC (ETS), a Russian developer of electronic trading systems; transaction amount was $ 1.8 million .

In 2012, Armada's revenue amounted to 5,579 million rubles. Net profit - 410 million rubles., Cash on the accounts of the company - 1,079 million rubles ^[9] .

2014 Corporate Conflict

A sudden drop in profit in 2013 was 37 times and suspicions of the withdrawal of funds from the company in the amount of 2.5 billion rubles. created a corporate conflict between shareholders and management.

In 2014, the company experienced changes in the management and composition of shareholders, which provoked a corporate conflict and a number of lawsuits. In March 2014, Vedomosti wrote about the causes of this conflict: Armada's business grew worse than the entire market, and the company's management ceased to meet with potential investors. In addition, the management, for far-fetched reasons, denied shareholders the right to convene a meeting of shareholders ^[10] .

In July 2014, the Rosbalt news agency reported that, in violation of the rights of shareholders, the management, headed by the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Armada Alexei Kuzovkin, did not allow candidates from shareholders to be nominated to the board of directors at a general meeting. The court upheld the position of one of the shareholders - Arsenal Advisor, and ruled that if the company does not conduct, then the shareholder can organize and hold a meeting of shareholders ^[11] .

A little later, in July 2014, TASS announced the loss at the meeting of shareholders of candidates from Kuzovkin (64.9% voted for the new board of directors and only 10% for the old one), which confirms that the majority of Armada shareholders were dissatisfied with the old management ^[12] . At the same time, RBC called the cause of the corporate conflict in the company a significant drop in the value of shares, revenue and profit for 2013 by 37 times ^[13] .

The Vedomosti newspaper in August 2014 reported that the newly elected board of directors did not find employees and documents in the company’s office ^[14] .

In October 2014, Rossiyskaya Gazeta published extensive material about this ^[5] , in which it paid special attention to the actions of the new chairman of the board of directors, German Kaplun. The newspaper accused Kaplun and his partners of organizing a PR campaign in the media and manipulating stocks during the summer of 2014, which led to a landslide (by 40%) decrease in the value of OAO ^[5] . According to the newspaper, in the end, Kaplun and his partner Alexander Morgulchik (one of the founders of the RBC holding) seized corporate governance bodies through the purchase of cheaper shares ^{[5] [15]} . In its publication, Rossiyskaya Gazeta did not name the media that participated in the PR campaign on the other hand, but indicated that “the number of publications mentioning the previous Armada management in a negative way has exceeded 50 in citations of the new management” ^[5] . The newspaper clarified that some media are “central”, and described some headlines as “feuilleton”, citing them ^[5] . In November , Profil magazine issued a rebuttal with an apology ^[16] regarding two such publications. Subsequently, similar refutations were published by the Trud newspaper ^[17] , the Kompaniya magazine ^[18] , the Rosbalt news agency ^[19] and several other media outlets ^{[20] [21]} . During the trial, the courts sided with the old management of Armada ^[22] .

Leading business media held alternative views on the conflict: Vedomosti, Kommersant, Forbes and RBC. Thus, Kommersant wrote in September 2015 that the fall in the quotes of Armada shares did not prevent the entry of new shareholders into the company: ATON Investment Group and Genezis British Investment Group entered the market by 13.3% ^[23] . In the article "Kommersant" dated November 28 ^{[ specify ]} it was said that the shareholders and, above all, A1 (the Alfa Group structure) accused the previous management, headed by Alexey Kuzovkin, of withdrawing funds from the company in the amount of 2.5 billion rubles . In addition, a sharp deterioration in the financial situation in the company was emphasized, a 37-fold drop in profits, to 11 million rubles. .

• pao-armada.ru - official site of the Armada company