Latest Russian Takeover Goes to a Months-Old Manager

A French flooring maker, a Belgian nappy producer and three packaging firms have lost control of their Russian businesses to a company founded in February 2026. The latest Russian takeover, reported on 16 October, hands Tarkett, Ontex and three others to Tsentr Kapital, a Moscow management company. Its owner is a 47-year-old former regional deputy governor who says he served in the war against Ukraine.

A Russian takeover that changes only who decides

Russia calls the arrangement temporary management. The foreign owner keeps formal title to its shares and loses the right to run the business. The decree covers Tarkett (flooring, with plants in the Moscow and Samara regions), Ontex RU (maker of the Helen Harper nappy brand), Kappa Rus and Eviosys Packaging Kuban (both packaging) and Menshen Packaging CIS.

TASS, which lists the holdings, gives the stakes: 100 per cent of Tarkett Sommer, 100 per cent of Ontex RU, 99.71 per cent of Kappa Rus through a Swedish holding company, 100 per cent of Eviosys through a Dutch subsidiary of the US group Sonoco, and 0.29 per cent of Menshen Packaging CIS held by Germany’s Georg Menshen.

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The Moscow Times puts the five companies’ combined 2025 revenue at more than 53 billion rubles, about $633 million, with Tarkett the largest at 19.3 billion. Citing corporate registry data, the paper also says Tsentr Kapital was registered in February 2026.

A manager with a short record

Tsentr Kapital belongs to Marat Mirkhaidarov, 47, who was deputy governor and chief of staff of Russia’s Zabaikalsky region until March 2025. He told Agentstvo: “I’m a patriot, I served in the special military operation.”

The first decree of this kind, in April 2023, put the Russian units of Germany’s Uniper and Finland’s Fortum under the federal property agency Rosimushchestvo. Two of the managers named this autumn, Tsentr Kapital and Metro’s UK Torg Rus, were registered in 2026.

Metro reportedly asked for it

The September takeover of Metro’s Russian business followed a different path, Le Monde reports. Its source says Metro itself asked the Kremlin for temporary management to keep more control over its fate, after Auchan, Nestlé, Lemana PRO and FM Logistic were taken on 17 September.

The manager, UK Torg Rus, was registered on 8 September, three weeks before the decree of 28 September. Its sole owner is Johannes Tholey, who has headed Metro’s Russian business since 2023. The source called the move risky but said a sale on better terms remained possible.

Moscow calls it reversible and ties it to frozen reserves

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the transfers continue a policy aimed at countries that froze more than 210 billion euros of Russian reserves in Europe, and that the companies’ origin was one of the factors in the decision. After the September round the Kremlin said the measures followed “the increasing level of involvement of these unfriendly countries in direct battlefield hostilities”.

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Reuters, citing TASS data, counts 135 firms affiliated with foreign companies, most from EU countries, under temporary administration since the war began. The Association of European Businesses has 330 member companies operating in Russia, down from 400 a year earlier. A senior Russian government source told Reuters the aim is to make Europe think about its sanctions, and asked about the next targets answered: “Let them be scared.”

The EU’s foreign service described an earlier round, against subsidiaries of Italian and German companies in April 2024, as “yet another proof of Russia’s disregard for international law and rules”.

Asked in September whether any of it could be undone, Peskov said: “For now, we do not see any grounds for a reversal.”