At the end of April, the Tenth Court of Appeals for Arbitration upheld the decision to recover 176.6 million rubles from Ikea Dom LLC (Ikea legal entity in Russia). in favor of advertising agency Mediamaker (part of Group4Media) for refusing to advertise on TV under an annual contract with the agency. In this respect writer Vedomosti newspaper, which refers to the court file.
In the appeal, Ikea Dom LLC pointed out that the penalty for canceling the transaction under the contract was miscalculated, but the appeal court considered these arguments untenable. This is the largest lawsuit ever brought against Ikea, and the only one involving the company where the court has not reduced damages to the plaintiff dozens of times out of the article.
The decision in favor of the mediamaker was made by the Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region on February 15 this year. The third party in the lawsuit was the National Advertising Association (the NRA controls the sales of over 90% of the ads on Russian TV).
“In December 2021, Mediamaker entered into an agreement with the NRA on behalf of Ikea Dom LLC to place advertisements on Russian TV in 2022. And on June 20, 2022, Russian legal entity Ikea notified Mediamaker that the annual contract was unilaterally rejected.
In the decision of the arbitration court, it is stated that Ikea did not reimburse Mediamaker for the costs related to the cancellation of the TV advertising campaign and did not pay the agency fee stipulated in the contract.
The court decided to collect 175.9 million rubles from Ikea in favor of the Mediamaker. To pay NRA fines and 533,128 rubles. delays in payment of agency fees and 200,000 rubles. state duty.
Ikea suspended store operations in Russia in March 2022, and in June the company announced that it was shutting down the network.