Integrated Whale Media (IWM), the owner of the American media group Forbes Global Media Holdings, terminated the sale of Forbes to the CEO of Luminar Technologies Austin To Russell (Austin Russell). This is reported by foreign media.
IWM explained its decision by the lack of sufficient financing of the transaction by Russell, caused by the inability of the Indian investment company Sun Group to fulfill its financial obligations.
Nevertheless, the management of Forbes Media believes that the cancellation of the transaction will not affect day-to-day operations and the company will continue to "consider alternative options."
In May 2023, Russell entered into a final agreement with Hong Kong-based Integrated Whale Media Investments to acquire 82% of Forbes Global Media Holdings for $800 million.
After the deal closed, Russell planned to regain ownership of the global media platform in the United States without his involvement in the day-to-day operations of the brand and did not intend to sell or use any part of his stake in Luminar to finance the transaction. In addition, Russell intended to buy out a block of shares owned by the Forbes family.
At the same time, IWM planned to retain a minority stake and one seat on the board of directors of Forbes. IWM acquired a controlling stake in Forbes in 2014 for $475 million from the Forbes family and the Elevation Partners investment group, ensuring the transition of Forbes to digital technologies.
Russell's proposal caused surprise, since Russell has no experience in the media industry, and also caused criticism and close attention of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) in connection with the alleged foreign participation, in particular, of the Russian billionaire Magomed Musayev, who in 2016 helped attract initial investments in the amount of $20 million to Russell's company Luminar and became the second largest external shareholder of the company.
In October 2023, The Washington Post published videos claiming that Musayev was behind the deal. At the same time, Russell categorically denies the participation of any Russian individuals in the transaction, including Musayev, who also denies his participation.
Magomed Musaev is a venture entrepreneur, president of the Global Venture Alliance, owner and member of the board of directors of Forbes Russia publishing house, which he acquired in the summer of 2018.
Austin Russell is an American billionaire entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Luminar Technologies. Luminar specializes in the development of hardware and software for automotive lidars and machine vision technologies used in self-driving cars. Luminar cooperates with the world's largest automakers. The headquarters are located in Florida and California (USA).
Forbes is an American financial and economic magazine and one of the most authoritative and well-known economic publications in the world. Forbes publishes the flagship magazine of the same name for 6 million readers. Each issue of the journal contains more than 60 analytical articles about companies, their creators and managers. The magazine gained special fame thanks to the published lists of wealthy entrepreneurs and ratings. Forbes Media has local versions of the magazine in 63 countries and is published in 36 languages.
IWM is a group of investors headquartered in Hong Kong. Integrated Asset Management, a subsidiary of IWM, is engaged in fulfilling government orders in the telecommunications, financial and technological spheres and is a manufacturer of computer equipment and motherboards ASUSTeK Computer.
