At present, cryptocurrencies don’t have any legal status and are not regulated in Russia. Yet a company called Artel has managed to officially add bitcoin to its authorized equity capital. Not without giving the entity a hard time, the country’s Federal Tax Service eventually agreed to register the change in its status. According to experts …
Russian tax authority registers crypto as part of a company’s capital Read More
Russia’s biggest mobile phone operator MTS said on Monday it had agreed to sell its Ukrainian business to Azerbaijan’s Bakcell for $734 million. The company also said its board had approved a special dividend of 13.25 rubles ($0.21) per ordinary share, or 26.5 billion rubles ($420 million) in total. “Given the small share of our …
Russia’s top mobile operator sells Ukrainian business Read More
Leading Russian private equity firm Baring Vostok has cancelled plans to raise a sixth fund that could have been worth $1.3 billion, as five of its senior managers face fraud changes and three of them languish in prison, the firm announced on November 21. International institutional investors are concerned about “contradictions in Russian and international …
Baring Vostok cancels plans for $1.3 billion sixth fund Read More
ExpoCapital Overseas, a division of the Moscow-based venture fund ExpoCapital, has acquired a 7.28% stake in Russian online drugstore Megapteka. Backed by ExpoBank owner Igor Kim, this fund was created in early 2018. The Megapteka deal was reported earlier this week by business daily Kommersant based on company register information. The details of the deal were …
Russian VC fund invests in online pharmacy as new legislation could boost the market Read More
Yesterday Sberbank, the state-controlled financial giant, and LSE-listed Mail.Ru Group signed binding agreements concerning their JV partnership in the fields of food delivery and taxi hailing. As previously announced: The deal puts Mail.Ru’s Delivery Club and CitiMobil businesses, plus Sberbank’s own FoodPlex arm into a single joint venture. The two partners will invest “up to …
Sberbank extends ownership and partnership with Mail.Ru Read More
The Russian crowdfunding market has contracted by more than 40% in 2019, figures from the Central Bank have shown. In the first nine months of the year, 5.2 billion rubles ($81 million) had been raised through crowdfunding on Russian platforms, compared to more than 8 billion rubles in the same period of 2018, Russian business …
Crunchbase and East-West Digital News are teaming up to cover key tech and venture trends from Russia and neighboring countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Since January 2019, EWDN chief editor Adrien Henni has offered a monthly column to highlight the most notable industry facts and trends as well as promising tech innovations from these countries. The October review highlights the …
Andrey Andreev, the Russian-born online dating tycoon, has sold his business MagicLab to Blackstone, one of the world’s leading investment firms. The deal valued the company “at approximately $3 billion,” the firm stated, without providing any more details. MagicLab touts itself as the company that “invented how people meet in the modern, mobile age,” “connecting and transformed …
Andrey Andreev sells Badoo, Bumble to Blackstone at $3 billion valuation Read More
The Russian p2p ticket marketplace Eticket4 has agreed a $1 million investment deal with a group of individual investors, including David Izraelov and other unnamed business angels. The capital injection will be made in several stages based on a $2.8 million company valuation, reports VC.RU. Earlier this year, in July, the startup sold 13% of its stock …
Russian ticket marketplace Eticket4 raises $1 million Read More
Litres, a leading Russian e-book company, has acquired a majority (51%) stake in Eesti Digiraamatute Keskus OÜ (Estonian Digital Book Centre or EDRK). The details of the transactions were not disclosed. EDRK is an online wholesale e-book platform which controls 90% of the Estonian market, according to company statements cited by Vedomosti. Litres hopes to replicate in …
Russian e-book leader Litres expands to Poland, Baltic states and Finland Read More
Yandex.Taxi, the taxi-hailing company which merged activities in Russia and some neighboring countries with Uber last year, is considering going public through a dual-listing in Russia and the USA. The company is in talks to hire Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to manage the potential IPO. “An IPO is something we are considering as we have said previously, and we work …
Yandex.Taxi considers IPO; self-driving business unit to spin off Read More
Venture investment volume in Russia reached almost half a billion US dollars ($493.6 million) in the six first months of this year, according to Dsight. This Moscow-based venture analytics and business intelligence agency released last week the English version of its latest industry report. While still modest by international standards (US venture deals accounted for …
Russian venture market grows but remains modest by international standards Read More
