General Atlantic, a US-based private equity fund, has bought a large stake in Kaspersky Lab. Though no details of the deal have been disclosed by the parties, it is known that General Atlantic has become the second-largest shareholder in the Russian computer security company. Evgeny Kaspersky, who owns a controlling stake in the firm, will …
The Russian Interior ministry announced that a criminal case has been opened against a 26 year-old Muscovite for having “replicated and disseminated” 18 copyrighted music recordings from his personal page on Vkontakte.ru. This followed a complaint from Nikitin, the Russian music company that owns the rights.
Japanese holding company Mitsui & Co. has bought a 15% share in Qiwi, Russia’s leading operator of offline electronic payment terminals. Existing shareholders Mail.ru Group, the operations branch of DST investment, and Qiwi management both sold shares to complete the deal and now hold 21.4% and 63.7% respectively. No official information on the value of …
Japanese corporation buys stake in Russian Qiwi payment system; US expansion considered Read More
The Russian Ministry of Communications and Mass Media has finally made a move on the deployment of LTE technology, a widely accepted pre-4G mobile network standard. A consortium composed of the so-called “big three” leading national mobile operators, MTS, VimpelCom and MegaFon, in cooperation with state fixed-telephony operator Rostelecom, has been requested to investigate all …
Mobile operator consortium to prepare LTE deployment Read More
Authorities in Kaluga region are to get $17.2 million finance from the federal budget to build a technopark specializing in high technologies, Interfax reports. The technopark is reportedly to be located in the city of Obninsk. The project is scheduled to be carried out in 2011-2014.
In 2010, Russian search engine Yandex remained by far the leading search engine on the Russian-language Internet. According to LiveInternet.ru, a leading website traffic ranking site, Yandex generated 64.1% of all visits to other sites generated by search engines from December 2009 to December 2010, an increase of 5.2 points over the previous year. Google’s …
VimpelCom, a leading Russian mobile operator working under Beeline brand, has announced a purchase of 100% shares of Belgorod region telecom Belgorodskiye Tsifrovye Magistrali (Belgorod Digital Mains) for $14.7 million. Belgorod Digital Mains provide telephone and broadband Internet services under Magistrali Telecom and Belnet brands.
Skype announced yesterday it had signed a final agreement with Almaz Capital Partners investment fund to acquire Qik, a mobile video file sharing application. Analysts assess the deal to be worth $150 million, although neither party is commenting. The transaction will be finalized this month.
Digital Sky Technologies (DST Global), Russia’s major Internet investment fund, pledged $50 million to Facebook’s latest $500 million financing round. In addition, DST stakeholder Goldman Sachs bought a $450 million stake with the right to sell up to $75 million to DST, according to sources quoted in The New York Times involved in the talks. With …
DST takes part in Facebook’s newest and largest investment round Read More
