Oligarch Abramovich linked to Cirque du Soleil shareholder

The Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich is said to have invested in an American firm, Sculptor Capital Management, which is also a minority shareholder in Cirque du Soleil.

Vincent Brousseau-Pouliot
The Press

According to wall street journalRoman Abramovich is said to have invested sums over the years in several hedge fund firms (hedge funds) in the United States through New York-based Concord Management. the wall street journal names five American firms in which Mr. Abramovich would have invested, including Sculptor Capital Management, located in New York.

Since November 2020, Sculptor has been one of Cirque du Soleil’s minority shareholders. Through its various funds, Sculptor currently owns 3% of Cirque.

Does this mean that Roman Abramovich has financial interests in Cirque du Soleil through Sculptor? Not necessarily. It depends on which Sculptor funds he would have invested in.

Sculptor Capital Management is an investment firm that manages several separate funds (at least ten, according to its latest annual report) for its investors. An investor in Sculptor does not necessarily invest in all Sculptor funds. As of December 31, 2021, the firm’s total assets under management were US$38 billion.

Sculptor did not answer our questions, in particular to know precisely if Mr. Abramovitch is one of the investors of the Sculptor funds which hold 3% of Cirque du Soleil. It is therefore not known whether he invested in Sculptor funds having subsequently invested in Cirque du Soleil, or whether he invested in other Sculptor funds.

Sculptor also did not confirm whether the Russian billionaire had invested any sums with them, as the wall street journal.

For its part, Cirque du Soleil does not know the identity of the investors of each of its shareholders. “We don’t know the shareholders of the funds that invest in our company,” says Caroline Couillard, global director of public relations for Cirque du Soleil. The Quebec company did not wish to comment further on the file. Sculptor does not sit on Cirque’s board of directors.

Yellow Pages

Roman Abramovich would also have invested in another American firm, Empyrean Capital Partners, which owns approximately 21% of the shares of the Montreal company Pages Jaunes, revealed on Tuesday the Montreal Journal.

Yellow Pages has indicated to the Montreal Journal having “no knowledge” of Mr. Abramovich’s possible interests in Empyrean Capital Partners, one of the five firms cited by the wall street journal like those where he would have invested money.

A complex situation

These examples involving – or not – the best-known Russian multi-billionaire oligarch in the West demonstrate the importance and complexity of the investments of Russian oligarchs in the West, as well as the difficulty of imposing economic sanctions on them.

Mr. Abramovich, who was worth 14.5 billion US in April 2021 according to Forbesis subject to economic sanctions in the United Kingdom, the European Union and Canada, but not in the United States.

According to wall street journalseveral American firms were nevertheless suggested in March to freeze the assets of Mr. Abramovich, who was then trying to sell some of them.

In the United Kingdom, Mr. Abramovich is the majority shareholder of the Chelsea soccer club, which finds itself in practice operating under the supervision of the British government because of economic sanctions. Companies in which Mr. Abramovich is a minority shareholder – for example, the British steel company Evraz – can continue their activities relatively normally.

Minority or majority ownership, the basic principle of sanctions remains the same: a sanctioned oligarch cannot derive profits from his assets (for example, he cannot receive dividends or sell his assets).

“We find ourselves in a situation where the practicalities sometimes come into conflict with the principles behind the sanctions,” says Jennifer Quaid, professor of corporate criminal law at the University of Ottawa. It’s easy to say that you have to freeze all the assets of an oligarch. But when we sanction, we have to be careful not to cause collateral consequences that will do more harm to the Canadian economy. »

Generally speaking, the Government of Canada considers its economic sanctions imposed on Russia and the oligarchs to be “among the strongest”. “When we impose sanctions [aux oligarques], we render their assets useless and deprive them of their value. They cannot be sold or transferred – transactions are simply impossible,” the office of Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said in an email.