Lush Closes Businesses in Russia and Whoosh Sells Businesses in Europe – Business Breaking News July 12

World

• The Finnish Ambassador to the United States believes that Western sanctions are unlikely to weaken the RF Armed Forces in the near future.

Russia

• The Ministry of Finance will begin to identify unreasonable expenses of state-owned companies: the department has developed guidelines for evaluating the operating expenses of companies and monitoring their implementation. The monitoring will show the unreasonable expenses of companies for the rental of additional premises, luxury cars, etc.

• The Ministry of Digital Development intends to adjust the rules for the accreditation of IT companies before August 1, giving their employees the right to extension of compulsory military service.
• In Russia, for the first time since the start of the military operation in Ukraine, the number of vacancies for iOS and Android application developers has increased.

Business

• VK plans to strengthen the direction of EdTech and is discussing a deal to buy online language school Skyeng, The Bell has discovered. According to the publication, Skyeng shareholders are considering selling the asset or listing on the Moscow Stock Exchange.

• The game developer Nexters will transfer 100% of the shares of its Russian legal entities to the local administration, Forbes writes. The new owners will be responsible for the development of games in Russia, the hiring of employees and other business processes.

• IKEA has opened an electronic queue on the site. The company is leaving Russia and before that announced an online sale. Users expect it to start on July 5.

• Sberbank denied the news about the increase in the amount of the down payment on already approved mortgage applications. Earlier, the media wrote about customer complaints about an "unreasonable" increase in the down payment on already approved applications for mortgage loans from 15% to 35%.

• Tochka, a fintech company (it calls itself a "bank for entrepreneurs" but does not have the proper license) became the owner of the Marilyn advertising group, which includes the Blondinka.Ru agency, the Marilyn online advertising platform and the advertising service Aori for small business

• Companies can be required to transfer information about citizens without depersonalization. The draft law of the Ministry of Digital Development assumes that companies, upon request, will transfer personal information of citizens to the state, which will be depersonalized only by an authorized body.
• The British cosmetics chain Lush will close its business in Russia. Russian companies were unable to organize deliveries to the country even through parallel imports.
• Globally, hummus prices could rise as much as 20% this year. Russia and Ukraine are the two largest exporters of chickpeas in the world.
• Domestic perfume sales doubled in Russia. From January to June 2022, the Russians spent more than 6.4 billion rubles on it.
• Russian electric scooter rental service Whoosh has sold its business in Europe. The buyer was the CEO of Estonian Prime kicksharing.
• Sberbank customers complained about the increase in the down payment on approved mortgage applications from 15% to 35%.

Services

• Apple was fined for the first time for refusing to locate the Russians' data. The amount of the fine was 2 million rubles. For the same reason, a Russian court fined Zoom and Ookla, the owner of SpeedTest, a service for measuring Internet speed, 1 million rubles each.
• Skillbox will start training former inmates for free, the educational holding company has launched a resocialization project.

• Roskomnadzor has drawn up an administrative protocol against Yandex.Food for leaking personal data of couriers. The fine for the company will be up to 100 thousand rubles.

• The Ministry of Digital Transformation, together with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, launched a service for buying and selling a car in Gosuslugakh. A contract model is already integrated there, the developers assure that it will not take more than 10 minutes to complete it and sign it by both parties.