World’s Largest Tour Operator TUI Has a Russian Oligarch Problem
Photo Credit: Alexey Mordashov, a TUI Group supervisory committee member and then-CEO of Severstal, met with students in February 2013. Flickr / worlsteel
Skift Take
Does TUI Group really want to be associated with a Russian oligarch who sits on its strategy committee and who is close to and allied with Putin during Russia's invasion of Ukraine? That sort of publicity could hammer the company's reputation and its customers won't take the news well.
Ukraine Coverage
Skift’s reporters and editors are working to explain how the war on Ukraine is impacting travel. All of our stories about the subject are free for all readers.TUI, the world’s largest tour operator, must confront that its largest shareholder, Alexey Mordashov, is a pro-Putin oligarch who met with the Russian president in the Kremlin Thursday in a show of defiance against Western sanctions. As global opposition to Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine grows, having a Putin ally on its supervisory board presents TUI with a major optics problem, at the very least, if not larger, potential financial hardship.
Mordashov wields 34 percent of TUI Group’s voting power through control of a Cyprus-based company, and has been a member of TUI’s supervisory board, sitting on its strategy, nomination, and presiding committees since 2016. Mordashov's net worth is about $23 billion, after losing $4.2 billion last week when Moscow’s stock index plunged.
Update: Bloomberg reported Sunday night that the EU is discussing sanctioning Mordashov, along with other Rus
