James Packer ... "As an Australian investor in China and Macau, it's very hard to be critical of a corruption crackdown." Credit:AFP Just Eat said Menulog Group, which takes a commission of about 10 per cent from every online takeaway order a customer makes (the average order is understood to about about $44), would have revenue of about $40 million in 2015. About 6.3 million orders were made in the year to March 2015 from about 5500 restaurants. Menulog represented about 70 per cent of the combined business based on market share, while it is understood Menulog was far more profitable than the EatNow​ business. Based on the sale price Kamenev's 55 per cent stake will reap him about $470 million, subject to Foreign Investment Review Board approval. Catch Group's 25 per cent stake is worth about $215 million, while small shareholders such as Same and Schwab will make a few million dollars each. Packer, who is an investor in Catch Group, will also share in the spoils. For the Leibovich brothers, the deal is also a huge windfall after they unsuccessfully tried about 18 months ago to raise funds from prospective investors that would have then valued EatNow at about $15 million to $20 million. The brothers are said to have spoken to several media companies about investing in EatNow, which they had bought a majority stake in for about $5 million in 2012, without drumming up much interest. EatNow had previously bought competitors Mytable.com.au and Takeaways.com.au.

Service industries like tourism are benefiting from a lower Australian dollar. Credit:Phil Carrick 'An exceptionally smart guy' The Menulog Group sale is Kamenev's second large payday in a little more than a decade. Described by one acquaintance as "an exceptionally smart guy … who just stays out of the limelight", Kamenev quietly sold sold hotel booking service HotelClub to US travel giant Cendant Corp in an April 2004 deal that is said to have netted him tens of millions of dollars and perhaps even more. He declined to comment for this story. HotelClub was another business that enjoyed rapid success, having been born of out the Flairview Travel business Kamenev had established after arriving in Australia in 1990. Kamenev was born in Ukraine, then still part of the Soviet Union, and finished high school in Siberia before graduating with an economics degree from the Moscow Academy of Management.

Although he had worked as an economist in the Soviet Union, Kamenev delivered pizzas while studying English when he and his family moved to Sydney. Australia was a fortuitous choice; Kamenev and his family, wanting to escape a Soviet Union rapidly breaking up as communism collapsed, merely followed friends that had moved to Australia months earlier. His break came when he was introduced to an Australian travel agent. Kamenev suggested that he could bring Russian tourists to Australia, and the two men each put up $750 to pay for what Kamenev described in a 2002 interview with BRW as "some pretty dodgy-looking brochures". Armed with the brochures, Kamenev paid for his own airfare to Russia and convinced a party of 10 Russian tourists to visit Australia. Within two years, Kamenev and his then partner were bringing more Russian tourists to Australia than any other tour operators under his Flairview Travel business. It grew to what would become HotelClub, founded as the internet was just starting to take off in September 1997. It was profitable from day one and by the time of its 2004 sale had gross annual bookings of about $200 million from an inventory of about 5300 hotels in 35 countries, most of which were outside Australia. Kamenev left HotelClub after an earn-out period lasting about a year, establishing Menulog and online home loan provider MyRate.com.au in 2006 with the latter launching operations in 2008. By the start of 2014 Menulog had 500,000 active customers.

Attention now turns to what the protagonists of the deal will do next. Catch Group's Hezi Leibovich has already established the Yumtable restaurant table booking service. "Hezi is just very good about spotting trends ahead of time," one source says. "Maybe Yumtable gets bought by [US giant] OpenTable in the future." Kamenev's big focus is likely to be Slate Science, a business he founded with four other entrepreneurs three years ago. Based in New York and with its research and development office in Israel, Slate Science owns the interactive maths teaching platform and app Matific. The company raised $12 million in series-A funding in January, having tested its product with great success with Aboriginal students in central Australia. Kamenev got involved after deciding to focus his philanthropic endeavours on education (maths education in particular), and after trying to build his own online maths solution without success – in stark contrast to the success of Menulog.