Reorientation of Hugo Boss’s business in Russia, 100 million rubles for World of Tanks tournaments: highlights of August 16

World

• Pavel Durov rents a villa in the United Arab Emirates for $1 million a year in one of the most prestigious areas of Dubai – the Jumeirah Islands, writes American Forbes. In the context of the publication, many media outlets recalled Durov’s 2020 manifesto, where he called to abandon excessive consumption and stated that hundreds of millions in his account never pleased the businessman. Other sources, in turn, refute Durov’s transfer to an elite villa. According to them, the Forbes material is “part of the promotional activity of the Jumeirah Islands.”

Russia

• The draft law on the sale of alcohol online, taking into account the comments of various departments, may be submitted to the State Duma in the autumn session. The Ministry of Finance insists that the responsibility for violations of the selling rules should lie solely with the sellers and not with the markets. The FAS disagrees with the department. Online platforms are supported by the Ministry of Finance, and the Russian Post has already prepared the infrastructure for engaging in online trade.

Finance

• Fintech group Denum, founded by MFC MigCredit and MCC Papa Finance, enters the BNPL market. The Denum Pay by installment service will be launched in September, Kommersant learns.
• As of August 16, Blank raised the daily deposit rate for entrepreneurs to 9%, the press service reported.

Business

• The German company Hugo Boss AG has decided to reorient its business in Russia to wholesale deliveries and is negotiating the sale of its assets and liabilities in the country, writes Kommersant.
• Generative artificial intelligence (AI) developer Anthropic has raised $100 million from South Korean telecommunications company SK Telecom.
• Video game developer Lesta Games is investing 100 million rubles in holding World of Tanks tournaments and launching an eSports league for the discipline.

• The Prodamus payment service acquired the platform for launching AXL online courses, the deal amounted to about 480 million rubles. Previously, Prodamus worked with Getcourse, which also provides functionality to create online schools and courses. However, in August, the platform was disconnected from Getcourse, as the service introduced its own payment module. Experts say the deal will allow Prodamus to compete with the former partner.

• MegaFon reduced its stake in Start online cinema from 50% to 45%. As stated in the company, such a distribution reflects to the maximum the relationship with this asset”. Previously, Megafon planned to invest up to 5 billion rubles in the development of the service.
  

Services and technologies

• ChatGPT developer OpenAI is testing systems to identify and clean up unwanted information based on artificial intelligence, Bloomberg writes.
• Discord has temporarily shut down the discord.io service due to a data leak. The network obtained information on 760 thousand users.

• Ozon has launched a pay per click automated promotion strategy. Partners choose a product and set a daily budget, while the service’s algorithms dynamically change the offer based on the level of competition in the category. The bid will automatically adjust so that the position receives the most clicks. Previously, this functionality only worked for impressions.

• Russian business social network TenChat will enter Iraq this fall. The VBC Group is negotiating with representatives of the Middle Eastern country. According to the founder of the social network Semyon Tenyaev, this will contribute to the development of trade between the Russian Federation and Iraq.