Entry ban to Baltic countries and Poland, IT startups are losing popularity: news highlights September 19

World

• German automaker Volkswagen has scheduled an initial public offering for luxury sports car maker Porsche at a valuation of between $70.1 billion and $75.1 billion (€70 billion–€75 billion). At the beginning of September, Porsche was valued at around 85 billion euros, while at the beginning of the year it was worth 90 billion euros.

• Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have banned Russian citizens from entering their territory. The ban took effect from midnight on September 19. It also applies to those who have Schengen visas issued by third countries. The ban will not affect those who have relatives there, diplomats, holders of work or study visas and workers in the international transport sector.

• Turkish banks Is bankasi and Denizbank have suspended work with the Mir payment system.

• US agribusiness Bunge will sell its oil refining business in Russia to Exoil Group’s majority shareholder Karen Vanetsyan (Businesswire).

• Global trade flows fell sharply in July after two months of growth, signaling lower consumption amid the energy crisis, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Russia

• Russian tourists have found a replacement for European destinations – the countries of the Persian Gulf, Asia and Africa. This year, a record number of tours were bought in the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

• Almost 9.4 billion dollars in parallel import goods have been imported into Russia since May and 3.1 billion dollars in August. By the end of 2022, imports worth at least $20 billion are expected.

• The Ministry of Industry and Commerce opposed the parallel export of pharmaceutical and food products, but continues to think about alcohol.

Finance

• The St. Petersburg Foreign Exchange Exchange (SPVB) is negotiating the connection of brokers. The platform intends to trade OFZ, conduct an IPO and “carry out some of the functions of the Moscow Stock Exchange,” Kommersant sources say.
• Russian hedge funds have repeatedly reduced their interest in domestic IT startups. In 2021, the average bill for a project was 300-500 million rubles, but now it has dropped to 20-30 million rubles.

Business

• Sbermarket, after the division of the assets of O2O Holding, as a result of which Delivery Club passed to VK (which eventually passed to Yandex), announced its desire to create its own food delivery service from restaurants.

• Russian vertical greenhouse manufacturer iFarm has started construction of a farm in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. At the first stage, it is planned to grow microgreens and lettuce. The total production capacity of the farm is estimated at 23 tons per month. It is expected to become operational in the fall of 2022.

• The Russian service for buying back DamProdam equipment, which allows exchanging old devices for new ones at a surcharge (exchange), entered the Armenian market under the DramDram brand.

• Wildberries no longer sign up new vendors for free; now, when creating a trading account, the market asks to pay the so-called “guarantee fee”, the amount of which is 10 thousand rubles.

• Russian stores replenished warehouses with PlayStation 5 consoles. At the end of August, there was a large supply of these devices through parallel imports, but now there is no accelerated demand for them.

• Qmarketing and Qacademy founders Roman Kumar Wias, Igor Vinidiktov and Alexander Solovyov launched the Refocus online school for IT professions in Indonesia and the Philippines in early 2022. By the end of the year, the entrepreneurs plan to close two investment rounds worth $13 million. to enter Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia.

• One of the largest Russian developers of facial recognition systems, NtechLab, plans to open an office in Thailand by the end of the year.

• VK is negotiating agreements with various game studios for the exclusive representation of games on the VK Play gaming platform in Russia and the CIS. The company intends to create an analogue of the Steam and Epic Games platforms.
• In early September, shoe chain Ekonika closed a deal to buy a 5% stake in clothing retailer 2Mood. In the future, the company may increase its participation in the brand.
• The Russian structure of Heineken plans to launch its own line of products with flavors of cola, orange and lemon. Competition between new brands of carbonated drinks that would like to fill the niche of Coca-Cola and Pepsi is growing, but the original drinks remain on the shelves: they are imported through parallel imports.

• “Magnet” announced its intention to grow its own “meat”. Previously, Azbuka Vkusa announced a similar decision.

• MTS has launched a course on microservices development in Golang based at the Higher School of Economics. Students who successfully complete the training will receive an invitation to an internship at MTS.

• Sbermarket plans to deliver food from restaurants. They want to launch the service in test mode before the end of the year.