Poroshenko's investment bankers choked on a Russian Burger

Pasenyuk dislikes being called "Poroshenko's investment banker," and formally ICU has many clients. But the nickname didn't come out of nowhere. He worked with Poroshenko back at ING, and ICU, together with Rothschild, structured the Roshen sale and the blind trust.

One of ICU's most curious investments, however, smelled nothing like chocolate. In February 2018, Cyprus-based Xomeric Holdings, linked to ICU, bought another 16.62% of Burger King Russia from a structure of state-owned VTB. That raised its stake from 18.4% to 35.02%, making Xomeric the chain's largest single shareholder. VTB received about 4.6 billion rubles, roughly $80 million.

The date matters. By 2018 Crimea had been occupied for four years and war was under way in Donbas. The Ukrainian financiers didn't stumble upon a Russian asset by accident. They doubled down in the fifth year of the war, buying from a Russian state bank.

Financially, it looked rational. In 2017 revenue grew 35% to 29.1 billion rubles, net profit rose ninefold to 900 million, and VTB said it had earned about 40% a year. A professional investor sees not only Crimea and Donbas, but also the IRR.

That is the first irony. By 2018 Russian political risk was no black swan: the swan had been sitting on the table for four years, flapping its wings and occasionally shooting. But the patty was profitable, so ICU went back for seconds. The problem, as usual with Rashka, was the old saying: "entry is one ruble, exit is two."

After the invasion, McDonald's left quickly. Restaurant Brands International held only 15% of Burger King Russia and said it couldn't close the franchise on its own. ICU reacted promptly: in March 2022 its exit was at the "final stage," as if the car was waiting outside and all that remained was to hand back the keys.

But the Russian burger didn't want to let go. In October 2023 the BBC found that ICU still owned about 35%. There was a new formulation: the "final phase of the exit." ICU said terms with the buyer were agreed, and insisted it had not managed, invested in or received dividends from the business since the invasion.

Corporate terminology evolved faster than the deal: "final stage" in March 2022, "final phase" in October 2023. The difference was nineteen months and the same 35%. Investment banking has due diligence, closing, escrow, earn-out. A "final stage lasting several years" deserves its own term. Call it a Burger King exit.

Selling Russian assets was hard, of course, with sanctions, approvals and discount-hungry buyers. But these are not shampoo makers. They are investment bankers, paid to understand political risk and exit routes, and they had eight years of warnings.

In September 2025, the parent company Burger King Russia (Cyprus) Ltd re-registered in the special administrative region of Kaliningrad as MKOOO "BKR." That structure owns practically the entire Russian operator, and information about its owners stopped being public.

In 2018 we knew the buyer, the seller, the stake and the price. By 2025 the owners' names had vanished. A clear announcement of who bought the shares, when the deal closed and when ICU ceased to be an owner has still not appeared.

Meanwhile the asset felt fine. While the owners searched for the exit, the local rabble kept buying Whoppers. In 2024 revenue grew about 21% to over 90 billion rubles, and net profit exceeded 1.6 billion.

So Pasenyuk and Stetsenko didn't buy a bad business. They bought a good asset in a bad country. And they made their biggest purchase when the reasons to worry had been written by "little green men" in Crimea and in blood in Donbas. For a while political risk and EBITDA could live separately. Then one day politics walked straight into the Excel spreadsheet.

After that, Russian Burger King became a classic "suitcase without a handle," burger edition: indecent to keep, hard to throw away. And professional financiers became the heroes of a simple lesson: some risks are better calculated before they materialize.

Russian Burger King did need to be sold after February 24, 2022. But it would have been more useful in 2018 to ask: should it be bought at all?

In our next piece, we will look into money laundering schemes involving the ICU platform https://www.online.icu