RBC article. How RBC uses experts to manipulate public opinion. What they say in the Kremlin
On Friday, May 13, RBC reported that virtually all top managers responsible for editorial policy were leaving the holding. “Lenta.ru” understands what is happening in one of the largest media holdings in the country and what preceded the departure of the editorial management.
What's happening
The holding officially announced that project editor-in-chief Elizaveta Osetinskaya, news agency editor-in-chief Roman Badanin and editor-in-chief of the newspaper of the same name Maxim Solyus are leaving RBC.
The general director of the holding, Nikolai Molibog, explained this by saying that the opinion of the editorial bosses about the future of RBC did not coincide with the position of their leaders. “We have recently talked a lot about how to further develop RBC, and in these conversations we could not come to a consensus on some important issues,” he officially stated. Therefore, we agreed to separate.
It has not yet been announced who will take their place. Following the departure of top executives, some employees of the joint editorial office of RBC announced their intention to resign on social networks.
After the announcement of the departure of top management, RBC shares rose in price on the stock exchange.
What happened before
In April, it became known that in the fall of 2016, Elizaveta Osetinskaya would retire while studying at Stanford University in the Innovations in Journalism program. It was assumed that the training would last one academic year, after which the editor-in-chief would continue to manage the editorial offices of RBC projects.
However, later, on April 20, the media holding announced that Osetinskaya would step away from management a few months before her academic leave - after the May holidays. Representatives of the holding claimed that her absence would be temporary. It was reported that the management of editorial projects in her absence would be carried out by the editors-in-chief, including Badanin and Solyus.
How Osetinskaya's vacation was linked to searches of Mikhail Prokhorov
The official news of the top manager’s premature leave appeared almost simultaneously with reports of searches in the Onexim group, the structure that controls RBC and other companies of Mikhail Prokhorov. At the same time, inspectors did not come to RBC itself, a representative of the media holding told Lenta.ru.
The media wrote that the searches at Onexim may have political overtones: the authorities are allegedly trying to put pressure on Prokhorov to sell RBC. According to another version, they are trying to force the billionaire to sell the energy company Quadra. Shortly before law enforcement agencies arrived at Onexim, a story about violations in the work of Quadra was shown on TV. The media also claimed that RBC, which publishes materials about Panamanian offshore companies and investigations involving large businessmen and high-ranking officials, ignores Prokhorov’s energy company, which is also connected to offshore companies.
What they say in the Kremlin
The Russian President's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, has repeatedly denied media reports about the Kremlin's pressure on Prokhorov because of RBC articles that allegedly irritated the authorities. Peskov said that he communicates with Osetinskaya, as well as with many other media leaders. Shortly before her departure, the press secretary of the head of state met with her, but, according to Peskov, they did not discuss Osetinskaya’s leave.
Is Prokhorov selling or not selling to RBC?
At the end of April, the media reported that after the searches, Prokhorov was seriously thinking about selling both RBC and Quadra. The fact that a businessman from time to time negotiates the sale of a media holding is essentially nothing new.
It is known that he has been looking for a buyer since at least August 2014 (although the entrepreneur’s representatives denied this information). Kommersant then wrote that media platforms were necessary for Prokhorov when he was involved in politics: he was the leader of the Right Cause party, participated in the presidential race, and then headed the Civic Platform. But in 2014, the businessman retired from the party, and subsequently spoke out for its complete liquidation.
Photo: Ekaterina Chesnokova / RIA Novosti
After unpromising attempts to make a career as a politician, Prokhorov’s need for media assets disappeared, moreover, RBC worked exclusively to cover losses, and the shareholder had to invest considerable funds in it. At the moment, the holding's debt is $220 million. However, the billionaire liked what RBC journalists did.
How they tried to change the holding
A little over a year ago, RBC announced “Strategy 360”, within the framework of which the holding should continue to live. The initiator and ideological inspirer of the document was Nikolai Molibog. “RBC’s goal is to maintain revenue growth rates at a level not lower than the market average in the future. To achieve this goal, RBC plans to combine organic growth and profitable acquisitions in the fastest growing media segment - the Internet. RBC sees its key operational goal as ensuring high popularity of RBC resources among the Russian-speaking audience in the CIS countries and around the world in general. The main task, from the point of view of financial management, is to increase the profitability of the business,” the company’s website says.
However, for the two years during which Molibog led the company, RBC generated only losses: 1.97 billion rubles in 2014 and the same amount in 2015. The holding stayed afloat thanks to the sale of assets: it sold the Salon publishing house, the RBC Money payment system and Utro.ru.
Photo: Sergey Kiselev / Kommersant
There were also acquisitions. In 2014, the company bought the integrator Public.ru for 19 million rubles (and 200 thousand euros to diversify revenue streams). The project was entrusted to oversee the digital director of RBC business projects, Dmitry Kharitonov. Subsequently, as the source says, all activities on the project were frozen. The losses of Utro.ru alone, sold for only 30 million rubles, amounted to at least 100 million rubles in revenue per year. At least, this is the amount the publication brought in in 2013, and its daily traffic reached 400-500 thousand visitors per day.
RBC is not Prokhorov’s first ambitious but never realized project. In 2014, the entrepreneur gave the state, for 1 euro, the innovative Yo-mobile project, on which he previously had high hopes and in which he invested 150 million euros.
To whom does it sell, if it sells?
Sources of Gazeta.Ru call the National Media Group of Yuri Kovalchuk the most likely buyer of the media holding. At various times, the media claimed that Arkady Rotenberg, Vladimir Lisin, the Gazprom Media holding, co-owner of the Ilim group Zakhar Smushkin and the owner of Komsomolskaya Pravda Grigory Berezkin were vying for RBC.
Another version refuting previous assumptions
A top manager of a large Russian media holding told Lenta.ru that the sale of RBC has already taken place. This happened before it became known about Osetinskaya’s academic leave. He, however, did not specify whether her decision to leave was her own or whether the new owner insisted on it.
Recently, passions have been boiling over the dismissal of a number of leading managers from RBC.
The recent chief editor of this publication, Elizaveta Osetinskaya, decided to get involved in this story. On her Facebook, she denied the “economic version” of the reshuffle. Personally, I do not have reliable information about what caused the decision to dismiss, but what Elizveta is voicing raises serious doubts in me, for a number of reasons:
1) RBC, as a commercial enterprise, incurs billions of losses annually (more on this in the article below), and in any commercial enterprise, if it incurs losses, they change managers.
2) RBC, over the past few years, has lost a lot in terms of audience; if back in 2010, watching the RBC TV channel was considered a sign of an intellectual, but now it is a purely oppositional TV channel. And this is 100% the fault of editorial policy, including Osetinskaya herself is also involved.
3) And lastly, RBC did not become “anti-Kremlin” yesterday or the day before yesterday. If they wanted to overclock it for THESE reasons, they would have done it earlier.
And now the article itself is about the financial difficulties of this media holding, and about “effective managers” who see the hand of the Kremlin in all difficulties:
The offices of Mikhail Prokhorov's ONEXIM holding were searched with the participation of the FSB due to suspicion of tax evasion. Many media outlets have stated that the Kremlin wants to force Prokhorov to sell his shares in the RBC media holding.
In this regard, of interest is the financial condition of the company and where it spent hundreds of millions of dollars of “sponsorship” from Mikhail Prokhorov, as follows from the company’s documents, which shed light on the true culprits of RBC’s problems.
Background
RBC's first financial problems began in 2008 after the crisis broke out. The company got carried away with investments in securities and was unable to pay off its creditor banks. In 2010, Mikhail Prokhorov's ONEXIM holding acquired a controlling stake in RBC OJSC.
Having received such an enviable owner and investor, the company immediately proclaimed itself “the largest Russian media holding”, and its member media as “the leading business publication.” Until recently, this was largely justified - RBC managed to gain a fairly large audience and authority.
However, with the approach of the 2016 elections, the new “effective managers” of RBC, inspired by the unlimited financial support of the oligarch Prokhorov, decided to go into politics. “Journalists” came to RBC and used the media to promote Navalny and other oppositionists. As a result, instead of a “business publication,” readers saw media with biased political assessments and undisguised support for the non-systemic opposition. RBC from a reputable publication has turned into a refuge for “Navalny’s minions” and has become an instrument of anti-Russian, pro-Western propaganda.
“Business publication”: violation of journalistic ethics and funny mistakes
Headlines and news such as those below have become the norm for “business publications.” 
Nobody cared how such headlines correlated with elementary journalistic ethics (the law is generally binding, what does Navalny have to do with it?). The purpose of the headline is not to convey information to readers, but to promote Navalny out of nowhere and present him as a victim of the regime. Such “news” from “journalist” Rozhdestvensky and company have become the norm for “business publications.”
For reference: the official document of RBC pics.v2.rbcholding.ru/rbcholding_pics/media/files/5/61/87967565871081435589638532615.pdf, in which the company assures that it refrains from political assessments:
This must be what “conscientious journalists” call “living not by lies.”
RBC systematically allowed direct distortion of information. A typical example is the story of the report on the Litvinenko case. The “Business Edition” quite seriously called the report a “court decision” by which Putin was found guilty of the murder of Litvinenko, and showed complete legal and journalistic illiteracy. However, attentive readers quickly exposed the lies of the “conscientious journalists,” as a result of which the chief editor of RBC, Elizaveta Osetinskaya, had to apologize for the obvious lie. 
And just recently, another embarrassment occurred: readers saw a draft published on the RBC website with a comment from the editor, who asks journalists to find an expert with the “correct” opinion regarding Vladimir Putin’s instructions.
But maybe all this is just a series of coincidences, and we envy a major publication that, despite political bias and mistakes, was commercially successful?
"Greedy Team"
With the virtually unlimited resources of oligarch Prokhorov, RBC could become a commercially successful publication. As the director of RBC proudly reported in the annual report for 2014, “the RBC team meets two criteria - professionalism and greed.” If there are doubts about the first, then no one doubts the second.
The source of RBC's wealth is multi-million dollar loans from the “generous investor” Prokhorov. At the moment, RBC's long-term debts alone amount to more than 17 billion (!) rubles, which is confirmed by the latest financial statements of the enterprise signed by the general director. 
At the same time, in 2014-2015, RBC’s loss amounted to from one and a half to two billion rubles. 
In this regard, “effective RBC managers” do not pay even a ruble in income taxes.
How much did Prokhorov spend on the amusements of “scrupulous journalists”?
From financial documents it follows that Prokhorov invested about 300 million US dollars in RBC.
Here is a loan to Prokhorov’s company for $140,000,000, which was supposed to be repaid already in 2015, but the company received a deferment until 2020 (section 2.3.2 “Credit history of the issuer”):
This section also contains information about a second loan agreement for the same amount.
As you can see, over 6 years, RBC managed to pay only 16 million dollars out of 140 (just over 10%). Interest should also be added to the debt. An elementary mathematical calculation shows that under no circumstances will the company be able to pay off Prokhorov for the remaining 4 years and will inevitably be doomed to bankruptcy if it is left to its own “effective managers.”
Exchange rate difference as an excuse
What are the reasons for such unfortunate failures? The latest RBC report says that the exchange rate difference is to blame for everything: RBC borrowed in dollars and has to repay in them too. However, this does not stand up to basic scrutiny.
Firstly, exchange rate fluctuations began only in mid-2014. What did RBC management do for 4 years? What prevented him from paying off most of the debt and why, before any exchange rate fluctuations began, only 10% of the debt was paid off?
Secondly, imagine that the dollar costs half as much as it does now (pre-crisis rate). Then RBC’s debt is not 17 billion, but “only” 8.5 - RBC is also unable to pay this money.
There is another bad news for RBC. In 2015, the company’s net assets turned out to be negative, the company went to minus 500 million, as a result of which RBC violated the legislation on joint stock companies. This is clearly stated in the 2015 financial report:
Paragraph 11 of the Federal Law “On Joint-Stock Companies” states: “If at the end of the second reporting year or each subsequent reporting year the value of the company’s net assets is less than the minimum authorized capital specified in Article 26 of this Federal Law, the company no later than six months after the end of the reporting year is obliged to make a decision on its liquidation.”
Thus, at the end of next year, RBC will be obliged to find half a billion rubles somewhere to increase its net assets (which it does not have) or be liquidated.
In the meantime, as you can see above, the “effective managers” have one recipe: run to the narrow-minded investor Prokhorov and scam him into deferring the debt and new injections.
The Kontur-Focus system also gives RBC a negative financial rating for all indicators. And he says that a company with such indicators cannot count on a loan.
Why was the bottom broken?
To assess the quality of RBC's management, let's turn to the Corporate Governance Code, which was adopted by the Central Bank. This document establishes financial transparency in companies, management accountability, control over management costs and other measures to improve management efficiency. www.consultant.ru/law/hotdocs/33172.html
The efficiency standards at RBC must be high, because its “conscientious journalists” are very fond of exposing “ineffective” state corporations and institutions. Let's look again at RBC's annual report for 2014:
Translating from legal into Russian: in RBC, shareholders are deprived of the opportunity to ask questions about the company’s activities to “effective managers,” and minority shareholders are deprived of the opportunity to exercise corporate control.
There is no anti-corruption policy at RBC as a class! But how great it is to expose the “corrupt regime” without starting with yourself.
Do you still have questions about why management costs at RBC and, accordingly, losses are huge?
Diagnosis from auditors
And finally, having collected the patient’s history, we can confidently make a diagnosis. Wait a minute though. We completely forgot about the audit! Such an effective company must have a brilliant audit report.
Here it is for the past 2015. Signed just a few days ago.
It says here in black and white:
1. “Effective managers” of RBC carry out incomprehensible actions with accounts receivable (this is the money that other companies owe to RBC). Suddenly it turns out that the majority of RBC’s “debtors” are persons associated with the company. Apparently, in order to increase the amount of net assets, the company, through entities under its control, is inflating a bubble of receivables.
This is definitely something law enforcement agencies should be interested in.
2. And the best thing: “the Company’s ability to continue its activities depends on the desire and ability of the shareholders to continue to provide financial support.”
The RBC auditor seems to be hinting that as a result of the actions of RBC’s “effective managers” the company is already close to death, and the question of its existence depends solely on the goodwill of wealthy investors.
RBC. Results
Let's summarize the results of the investigation. What happened with RBC is a clear example of what can happen to a company if its management is entrusted to “effective managers” with liberal views. For them, the concept of “profitability” and audience interests simply does not exist. The media is turning into a media service for Navalny and other “protest leaders” with a 2% rating. Personally, I do not believe that this PR is carried out free of charge, for ideological reasons. Although RBC employs mediocre managers, they are far from fools in life.
But what about Prokhorov, you ask, why does he continue to pour huge amounts of money into RBC and does not demand a return? There can be two explanations for this. Either Prokhorov long ago accepted the fact that he would not receive a return on his investment and made a stupid mistake, or he has a commercial interest in squandering hundreds of millions of dollars. For example, minimizing the tax base of ONEXIM in this way.
According to media reports, Prokhorov insists on compensation for the money invested in RBC and is ready to sell it only on these conditions. Quite a surprising approach for a supporter of the “free market”: if you yourself invested the money incorrectly and did not monitor its use, this is solely your business risk, not the buyer’s. A company is bought to make a profit, and not to compensate for other people’s unjustified expenses.
So, today any potential buyer of RBC should know about the “largest media holding” that it:
1) brings a loss annually of up to 2 billion;
2) has accounts payable of more than 17 billion, which he will never be able to repay;
3) does not comply with basic standards of corporate governance and does not want to limit the appetites of management;
4) has a negative amount of net assets, which in a year could lead RBC to liquidation;
5) carries out incomprehensible actions with accounts receivable and cannot exist without multimillion-dollar support from investors.
On Friday, May 13, 2016, the management of Russia's last largest independent media holding, RBC, resigned. RBC editor-in-chief Elizaveta Osetinskaya, editor-in-chief of the joint editorial office of the RBC agency Roman Badanin, and editor-in-chief of the RBC newspaper Maxim Solyus were fired by agreement of the parties. Following this, several key editorial staff announced their resignation. The dismissal occurred against the backdrop of news about pressure on the owner of the holding, the Onexim group, Mikhail Prokhorov, and the company’s management.
Slon.Ru: "Ten Best RBC Investigations"— slon.ru/posts/67997
During the reign of President Putin, the Russian media market has lost many publications and entire journalistic teams: all major media either came under state control and became a propaganda tool, or ended up in the hands of obedient businessmen who impose restrictions on the publication of materials critical of the government. RBC looked like an exception against this background.
"Kommersant": The chief editor and chief editors of RBC were fired— kommersant.ru/doc/2986828
Recently, RBC has published several materials that, according to market participants, could irritate the Kremlin: an investigation into the activities of Ekaterina Tikhonova, whom Reuters called the president’s daughter, and detailed publications devoted to the use of offshore companies by businessmen close to the government based on the so-called Panama Files in early April.
"Jellyfish": RBC management decided to fire after an article about oysters near “Putin’s palace”— meduza.io
“The Kremlin turned to the owners of RBC with a demand to fire the management of the holding after the article “They will start breeding oysters in front of Putin’s palace near Gelendzhik” was published.” This was reported by Reuters citing a source.”
"Jellyfish": The day when RBC passed away From the editors of Meduza— meduza.io/feature/2016/05/13/den-kogda-ne-stalo-rbk
“Osetinskaya, Badanin, Solyus, dozens of RBC editors and journalists have performed a real miracle in the last two years. They did something that was impossible to do, unrealistic - that doesn’t happen. In the last two years, independent journalism has been dying in Russia; and over these two years, RBC has become the main independent publication in Russia - with first-class investigations, an impeccable reputation, and an audience of millions. Without any reservations, without any discounts for hard times.”
Radio "Echo of Moscow": “Replica Nut. I feel sorry for you" echo.msk.ru/blog/oreh/1764908-echo
“With every day, with every such dismissal, with every destroyed or completely liquidated editorial office, your window to the world is closing more and more tightly. This is no longer a window. It's not even a window anymore. This is some kind of gap. A keyhole through which you somehow try to see what is really happening around us in the country and on the planet. However, you can easily turn your head in the other direction. There, where something glows very brightly and shimmers. This is also a window. And it seems to also be a window to the world. But an intelligent person, having looked closely, will understand that this is not a window - but a distorting mirror.”
In contact with
The day before, Vladimir Putin made fun of the journalistic profession during the forum of the All-Russian Popular Front in Mordovia. One of the forum participants was about to ask a question to the President of Russia, and he asked about her type of activity.
“A journalist,” she replied, adding: “And she was a teacher.”
Were you a teacher? Did you become a journalist? What a fall...
After a pause:
Just kidding...
It would seem that the entire journalistic fraternity, including our entire creative team - the Military Review team, should harbor a grudge against the president. Like, what does he allow himself to do - he insults, you know, journalists, although he says that this was said as a joke... But only with the journalistic profession, and I think that colleagues from other media will not argue with this until foam on the corners of the mouth, some strange transformation is observed. And this transformation is often far from positive. And only with journalism?..
Some publish reports about the “explosion of an air conditioner” and how “they set themselves on fire in Odessa,” others publish interviews about a “crucified boy.” Still others write about the “Altai armored police,” while others write about “Yarosh’s fireproof business card.” However, against the backdrop of some miracle materials, even a report “about an air conditioner explosion” may seem like flowers.
As a truly enchanting example of modern “journalism,” we find material dated April 21 of this year, published on the Internet site of the large information resource RBC. Not just an information resource, but an entire media holding, which is usually referred to among authoritative economists and analysts. – A media holding, which employs more than a thousand professional journalists, editors, proofreaders, etc.
We are talking about material that caused serious discussion in the blogosphere. Moreover, the discussion was sparked not so much by the material itself, but by the form in which it was originally published online.
So, more details about the work done by RBC specialists dated April 21. We are talking about an article to which such people as Maxim Tovkailo, Ekaterina Metelitsa, Lyudmila Podobedova, Timofey Dzyadko contributed their hands and talents.
It would seem that this is a completely ordinary article for RBC, which once again makes it clear that privatization (and the widest one) of state assets should become a panacea for the Russian economy. The article quotes the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who stated that if the privatization of state assets is to be carried out, then it is necessary to allow firms with Russian jurisdiction to participate in it and try to bypass all sorts of gray schemes and offshore companies that will not allow the state treasury to receive the planned profit, and the entire economy – planned effect. It is precisely this position of Vladimir Putin in the RBC material that seems to be subject to the main criticism. Like, you give “free” privatization - so that everyone who is not too lazy can have a hand in it (and they don’t even want to have a hand), including foreigners (apparently, such as William Browder or George Soros...)
However, the article was not immediately presented in this form. Initially, on the pages of RBC on the Internet, a material was published in which the editor, in the middle of the article, asks the authors to “insert a comment from some manager and head of the analytical department themselves,” who would criticize Putin’s proposal. Readers of the material quickly got their bearings and managed to save a version of the RBC material, which actually proposed conducting a mini-interview in a way that was beneficial to the editors. The original version is .
After Vladimir Putin’s quote, the editor’s note appears in the RBC material, which eloquently testifies, to put it mildly, to the media holding’s specific operating methodology. Here is this entry (all typed with Caps Lock):
INSERT YOURSELF!!!
COMMENT FROM SOME MANAGER OR HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT ANALYST ABOUT THE fact that the CONDITIONS SET UP BY PUTIN IMMEDIATELY REDUCED THE RANGE OF POTENTIAL BUYERS AND WHY. WHAT A TYPE OF VTB CONDITIONAL, IF I COULD ACT AS AN ANCHOR INVESTOR IN THE SALE OF ROSNEFT CONDITIONALLY, THIS WOULD GREATLY EASIER PRIVATIZATION.
The whole piquancy of the situation lies not so much in the fact that this editorial comment was published, but in its essence. It turns out that RBC selects experts to comment on the material, outlining in advance what they essentially have to say. And does he even talk to these experts? That is, there is no talk of any “live” expert opinion. Let them say what we need...
The funniest thing (if this is even a reason for laughter) is that in place of this editorial comment, the “expert judgment” that RBC needed actually appeared. And it was presented, as it were, by the chief economist of PF Capital, Evgeniy Nadorshin. From RBC material:
As can be seen from the example of the privatization of RAO UES assets and the sale of Yukos assets, the need to participate in transactions of companies with Russian jurisdiction is circumvented by the creation of structures like Baikalfinancegroup, recalls Evgeniy Nadorshin, chief economist at PF Capital. According to him, sanctions not only limit the ability of Russian companies to attract financing in Western markets, but also sharply reduce the circle of Western investors interested in investing in Russian assets.
He said what RBC needed...
And in order not to be limited to the “independent judgment” of one expert, RBC decided to add the opinion of a second one. But either something went wrong with the creative, or the expert really decided not to shine. In general, judge for yourself:
Since the sanctions, American and European investors have lost interest in Russian assets, even highly liquid ones that have fallen greatly in price, agrees another financial consultant who requested anonymity.
Who do you agree with? With those who first explained to the expert what opinion he should present? And how many “anonymous consultants” can you find who disagree? Why not give their version?
But it was said: “INSERT YOURSELF!”, so they inserted it...
In general, to use the language of modern youth: we got burned!..
And after this, you no longer know: if the media writes about something, presenting an “expert judgement,” is it really an expert judgment or something from the “insert it yourself” series according to the RBC method?
As an option: a specialist, on the condition of anonymity, agreed that we do not need such journalism...
The RBC information website mistakenly published a draft of the article “Privatization under threat: why the authorities are in no hurry to sell off assets.” This was noticed and published on his page by blogger vredina999.
In the draft text on the privatization program, there is a comment from the editor, who asks journalists to find an expert themselves who will express the “correct” opinion. In particular, the expert found was supposed to criticize Vladimir Putin’s instructions on the privatization of state assets.
The surviving draft of the RBC article:
Let us recall that the President of Russia stated that the assets of state-owned companies must be sold only to Russian investors, and also ensure that the property is not then transferred out of the country through offshore companies. The RBC editor insisted that the selected expert explain that the privatization conditions outlined by the authorities had significantly narrowed the circle of investors and it would be more difficult for the state to sell its assets.
The article on the site, published on April 21 at 20:35, was promptly corrected to the clean version (however, a cached version of the draft was saved in Google). Instead of the editor's commentary, the words of Evgeny Nadorshin, chief economist at PF Capital, and an anonymous financial consultant appeared. Both made a statement that was “ordered” by an employee of the publication - the circle of buyers of assets of Russian companies has sharply narrowed, experts said.
Screenshot of the “finished” version of the publication:
The text also discusses the possibility of the state selling the companies' assets this year. The authors argue that there are real chances only in the case of Bashneft. Various problems may arise with the remaining assets - lack of buyers, low prices, or disagreement with the privatization of the company's top managers.