Russian oligarch Sergey Galitskiy walks away from his $8-billion empire

Galitskiy sells 29 percent of Magnit to state-controlled VTB

In 1998, Sergey Galitskiy opened a small grocery in his hometown of Krasnodar, 800 miles south of Moscow. Over the next two decades he expanded that modest operation into an empire with almost $20 billion in sales and 16,000 stores across Russia, amassing a fortune valued at some $5 billion in the process. On Friday, he walked away.

Galitskiy will quit as chief executive officer of Magnit PJSC after selling 138 billion rubles ($2.5 billion) of shares--29 percent of the company--to the state-controlled VTB Group, Magnit said in a regulatory filing. Though he had been cutting his stake in the chain