Finam to launch over-the-counter forex trading, losses due to Crowdstrike failure exceeded $5 billion: main on July 25

World

• The European Commission has banned EU individuals and legal entities from participating in the Central Bank’s previously proposed blocked asset swap scheme. We are talking about assets trapped in the sanctioned NDR and in European depositories Euroclear and Clearstream.

• Fintech firm Revolut has been granted a banking license in the UK and the service has been submitting applications since 2021. The license issued by the PRA will be subject to a number of restrictions that apply to all banks in the early stages.

Finance

• Broker Finam intends to provide people with access to over-the-counter trading in “unfavorable” currencies through the Finam Trade platform. Such a tool should appear in August.
• In January-June 2024, the average salary of IT specialists was 150 thousand rubles. In some positions, it decreased by 15-25% compared to the same period last year.

• Russian experts have welcomed the adoption by the State Duma of the Russian Federation in the first reading of a bill that would legalize cryptocurrency mining in Russia. Experts believe that its final approval will allow it to overtake the United States and achieve lower electricity prices.

• Russian companies have increasingly started to receive refusals from Central Asian banks to make payments. The failure rate in July was 30%. The problems mainly affect payments to other countries, including China.

Business

• The 500 largest US companies by revenue (excluding Microsoft) suffered losses totalling around $5.4 billion due to the Crowdstrike failure. Financial losses worldwide due to the failure could reach around $15 billion.

• Ozon is holding a tender to find a recruitment agency that can attract staff from Belarus and Kyrgyzstan to work in the warehouses. The company plans to hire 350 people a week, RB.RU reported.

• The price range for the Kifa B2B platform’s IPO will be 92-110 rubles per share. Applications will be accepted from July 25 to August 7. The offer is open to qualified and non-qualified investors, as well as institutional investors.

Services and technologies

• Yandex has added to its Masterpiece service the ability to create clips from videos, images and “filters” generated by YandexART. Videos of up to two minutes are now available. The feature will help artists save on designing their projects, the company says.

• Experts commented on Yandex’s claim that the virtual assistant Alice does not “monitor” users and explained how the technology works. Experts have pointed out cases where such devices can still “spy” on conversations.

Transport

• VTB has launched an online service for the sale of cars with various ownership methods, “VTB Auto”. The client will be able to pay for the purchase in installments.
• Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun said the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra model will go on sale in the first half of 2025. The hypercar will be sold in two trim levels: regular and track.