Masterhost Masterhost

Masterhost LLC is a hosting provider and registrar of domain names in Russia. The company provides customers with professional comprehensive services for hosting and supporting Internet projects of any complexity.

Performance indicators

According to Anna Zaytseva, an analyst at Finam Management (November 2011), Masterhost owns 40% of the hosting market in Russia, while Hosting Community holds 45% (including the Ru-Center it acquired).

History

2021: Receiving Bankruptcy Claim

In mid-October 2021, it became known about the bankruptcy application of Masterhost, which JSC Information Center (IC) filed with the Moscow Arbitration Court. The lawsuit refers to a demand to recover from the hosting provider about 13.5 million rubles under the agreement on the provision of services of April 2014.

The bankruptcy application of Masterhost LLC, which appeared in the base SPARK-Interfax"," drew attention to. " Kommersant The publication writes that in May 2021 Masterhost filed a counterclaim, but the court stopped the proceedings. Three months later, the Moscow Arbitration Court satisfied the requirements of Information Center JSC in full.

Masterhost receives bankruptcy lawsuit

Masterhost told the newspaper that a bankruptcy application should be considered as an element of "ordinary life of two business entities."

Part of the amount established by the court of 5.5 million rubles, with which the company agrees, has already been paid. For the rest, a decision of the cassation is expected, which will be held on November 18 [2021]. In case of abandonment of our cassation appeal, we are ready to fulfill our obligations in full, "the company representative said.

According to Daniil Naimushin, managing partner of One-to-One Law Firm, arbitration manager, Masterhost's bankruptcy claim by Information Center JSC looks like a way to force the debtor to pay off the debt as soon as possible. He noted that Masterhost does not have external signs of bankruptcy: there are no restrictions on accounts, claims, enforcement proceedings, and the company serves obligations to counterparties. The financial condition of JSC IC is noticeably worse than that of Masterhost, said Lecap lawyer Oleg Proshlyakov. A bankruptcy case has already been instituted against the IC, he notes. The application for its own bankruptcy of CI JSC filed on July 1, 2021. The hearing is scheduled for October 15, 2021.^[1]

2020: The data center was captured by the former owner. Customers started crashing

On March 2, 2020, Masterhost services failed. The hosting provider and domain name registrar associated problems with the seizure of the data center by the former owner of the company.

Please be informed that there are currently difficulties in the operation of some resources.masterhost. All the forces of our specialists are thrown into a speedy solution to the problem, the Masterhost Twitter blog says.

This message was published at 11:08 Moscow time, and around 21:00 a new official statement was made. It refers to the seizure of the data center, which serves.masterhost, the former owner of the company. The group explained that he periodically initiates problems in the operation of the equipment. According to the representative of the company, due to the obstacle to the access of specialists to equipment, it was not possible to fix the problems in the shortest possible time.

As of 14:00 Moscow time on March 3, 2020, problems in the work of Masterhost services, and the company is working to "return services as quickly as possible." At the same time, it was difficult to name the specific terms of restoration at Masterhost. ^[2]

The answering machine at Masterhost Support reports that access to a number of sites may be limited. Technical services are restoring the regular operation of resources.

According to RIA Novosti with reference to the press service of Roscosmos, due to problems with Masterhost, the sites of the state corporation and a number of rocket and space industry enterprises are unavailable  for the second day in a row. In particular, it is impossible to enter the resources of the Khrunichev Center, the Center for the Operation of Ground Space Infrastructure Facilities, NPO Energomash, Glavkosmos and the Cosmonaut Training Center. Roscosmos is working on recovery.^[3]

2012: Cancel merge with "Рег.ру"

In March 2012, RBC daily reported that the merger of the hosting provider Masterhost and the registrar Reg.ru was suspended. Masterhost shareholders have changed their minds about selling the business.

The fact that the registrar of REG.RU domain names and the hosting provider Masterhost have not yet been able to complete the deal to merge these two assets was told by several top managers of large Russian telecom companies, and also confirmed by the minority holder of Masterhost shares. The merger process was scheduled to begin in January 2012. And plans to restructure assets in Masterhost and REG.RU began to be prepared after the signing of an amalgamation agreement in August 2011, RBC interlocutors say daily.

While the deal was being prepared, the structure of the owners in the Activist company, which owns the majority stake of Masterhost, was also changing. One of the two main shareholders of Activist, Yevgeny Benevolensky, persuaded partner Leonid Filatov to sell his stake in the company. As a result of this transaction, Filatov received monetary compensation and shares of the company OpenStat (his share in this project was brought to 100%), according to RBC daily interlocutors. Yevgeny Benevolensky, who gained control of Activist, and a group of minority shareholders of Masterhost decided to develop the project on their own, sources say.

However, the economic performance of the hosting provider began to decline. This is evidenced by the closure of the St. Petersburg office of the company (all customers of the provider received a corresponding letter). The official statement of the company says that the office will cease to work from April 1, 2012, and the support of St. Petersburg customers "will be fully carried out by employees of the main office in Moscow." The press service of the company explained the closure of the St. Petersburg representative office as its "economic inefficiency." According to one of the experts in the hosting services market, the share of the previously largest operator in the market, Masterhost, has now decreased to 6% in the segment.

Leonid Filatov said that he was no longer related to the Masterhost business, did not occupy any posts in the company and was not aware of what was happening inside it at the moment. They could not answer the question about the disrupted transaction at Masterhost.

The revenue of the combined company in 2012, as expected, would exceed 1 billion rubles. Alexey Korolyuk was to become the general director of the new structure, and Leonid Filatov was to engage in the strategic development of the company.

2011

Leonid Filatov sells a stake in the company to Yevgeny Benevolensky

On November 1, 2011, it became known that Leonid Filatov, co-founder of Masterhost, one of the two largest Russian hosting providers, sold his stake in the business and leaves the post of general director^[4].

Filatov said this on the evening of November 1, 2011 with a Facebook post: "From today, Filatov Leonid Evgenievich, I have nothing to do with the company.masterhost." According to the same record, "technically" he will remain the general director of the company for another week, after which he will part with his brainchild completely.

The editor-in-chief of the Webplanet publication owned by Masterhost, Alexei Andreev, who managed to talk with Filatov, told CNews that Masterhost's businesses (hosting provider with the data center, Mastername registrar and Webplanet) belonged to the Activist group of companies. Leonid Filatov sold his stake in Activist to another co-owner Yevgeny Benevolensky.

Interestingly, Webplanet was also among the assets sold, the initiator of the acquisition of which at one time was Leonid Filatov. At the moment, the further fate of the publication is unknown, says Andreev.

From the comments on Filatov's Facebook entry, it follows that Filatov completely got rid of his stake in the Masterhost business ("I have no shares, no influence, respectively"), and now he will devote himself to "another business." According to market participants interviewed by CNews, this case may turn out to be the statistical service Openstat (formerly known as Spylog), which is not controlled by Activist Group of Companies.

According to participants in the hosting market, Filatov has been trying to leave Masterhost since 2008. Among the potential buyers, in particular, was the ONEXIM group and the management company IQone.

Reg.ru Merge Plan

On August 23, 2011, it became known that Masterhost and Reg.ru were preparing an announcement on the merger. The association is planned, confirmed the CEO of Masterhost Leonid Filatov and Reg.ru Alexei Korolyuk, stressing: the shareholders will make a final decision in early September 2011^[5]. If there is a deal, then it is cash-free, Korolyuk clarifies: both companies will enter the holding, the shares in which will be distributed among their shareholders. Now, according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, 45% of the shares of Masterhost CJSC belong to Filatov (through Activist CJSC), another 45% to Yevgeny Benevolsky. By 42% "Рег.ру" from Alexei Korolyuk and Philip Gross, 16% - from Valery Studennikov.

The goal is to create a large player who will take leading positions in the hosting markets, where the leader of Masterhost, and registering domains where Reg.ru has strong positions, Korolyuk explains.

This will be the second major market deal for 2011. In March 2011, Hosting Community (part of RBC) announced the purchase of the largest domain registrar Ru-Center. The transaction amount is up to $35 million. Together, Masterhost and Reg.ru will occupy about 30% of the hosting and name registration market and will be able to compete on equal terms with Hosting Community, the deal participant says. This will be the second largest player, agrees the commercial director of Hosting Community Alexey Skvortsov: in the hosting market it will take 20%, and in Hosting Community 25%. The share of Ru-Center in the domain registration market in the.ru zone is now 33%, and in the.rf zone - 43%, says Olga Alexandrova-Myasina, representative of the Coordinating Center for the National Domain of the Internet; in "Рег.ру" - 18 and 22%, respectively.

1999: Start hosting services

Since December 1999,.masterhost has been providing its clients and partners with hosting services that provide access to sites from anywhere in the world, email service, server rental, domain registration, SSL certification and others.

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