The billionaire Russian entrepreneur behind ’s biggest vodka maker has paid $3 million to acquire the vodka.com domain, part of a bid to expand into the market, a broker said Thursday.
Sedo.com, the Web domain brokering unit that is part of ’s United Internet AG, said it had acted as the sales agent in the deal.
Conglomerate Russian Standard Co., controlled by Roustam Tariko, paid $3 million to an undisclosed seller in a deal completed Dec. 4, according to a Sedo.com spokesman. A New York-based spokeswoman for Russian Standard confirmed the $3 million price tag.
Russian Standard entered the U.S. market in September 2005 with its Imperia brand. The recipe for Imperia is said to have been discovered by 19th century Russian scientist Dimitri Mendeleev, inventor of chemistry’s periodic table of elements.
Russian Standard Co. controls not only two-thirds of the sales of premium vodka in , but also owns Russian Standard Bank, the
country’s largest private bank.
Vodka.com’s price tag is among one of the highest ever revealed for a generic Web domain.