REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
- The Russian entity of Domino's Pizza filed for bankruptcy earlier this month.
- Nine days later, a pair of Russian businessmen announced they'd taken over its assets, per Reuters.
- They're rebranding it to "Domino Pizza" with the "i" replaced by its Russian Cyrillic equivalent.
A rapper known for his pro-Kremlin lyrics and his restaurateur business partner announced Wednesday that they've taken over the Russian assets of Domino's Pizza, Reuters reported.
Timati's songs include a 2015 track with the chorus "President Putin is my best friend" and he has praised him as a "die hard superhero."
In 2019, Timati removed a music video from YouTube after it became Russia's most disliked upload on the platform, per The Guardian. Its lyrics praised the Kremlin-installed mayor of Moscow, and criticized pro-democracy protests in the Russian capital.
Now he and his business partner, Anton Pinskiy, have acquired 120 pizzerias with 2,000 employees, and will make only a minor change to the brand, per Reuters. It will be called Domino Pizza, with the "i" replaced by its equivalent Russian Cyrillic letter.
Pinskiy told reporters that he and Timati had already invested hundreds of millions of rubles into the business, per Reuters. 100 million Russian rubles is equivalent to about $1 million.
The pair also bought all of Starbucks' 130 Russian coffee shops last year, and rebranded it as Stars Coffee. Timati told The Wall Street Journal that it was a "totally different brand," despite their similar logos. Pinskiy said that Starbucks' assets cost just $6 million, per Reuters.
Wednesday's announcement came nine days after DP Eurasia — the Domino's company responsible for its Russian assets — announced it had filed for bankruptcy after ending attempts to find a buyer.
A DP Eurasia spokesperson confirmed that it had filed a bankruptcy petition and "no sale process of DP Russia has occurred," in a statement shared with Insider.
The exodus of Western businesses from Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine has seen $40 billion worth of assets snapped up at bargain prices by the country's entrepreneurs, according to the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.