Negotiations on new sanctions at a standstill, the growth of the turnover of delivery services is declining: the main thing for business December 12

World

• The EU has not yet agreed to a ninth round of sanctions against Russia. The reason for the deadlock was the large number of exceptions that the European states intended to introduce.
• Microsoft will become part owner of the London Stock Exchange. The corporation will buy a 4% stake in LSE, the market value of the package is estimated at $2.2 billion. Under the contract, the exchange will spend around $2.8 billion to buy Microsoft solutions for data analytics and cloud infrastructure development.

Russia

• Important representatives of the EdTech market, together with development institutions, agreed to create an association for digital innovations in education. Participants will be involved in the technological and social development of the industry, in particular, they will develop industry standards for product quality.

• Russian top managers are quite pessimistic about the immediate prospects for the Russian economy: only a third believe that a recovery should be expected by 2025 (this period is given in many official forecasts).

• Inspectors are advised not to initiate cases for traces of a number of drugs on the bodies of drivers. We are talking, for example, about phenibut, phenazepam, a series of antidepressants.
• Timberland brand stores in Russia have been renamed Bootwood. The rebranding took place three days ago, a store employee told RB.RU. Earlier, the media wrote that the manager of the Timberland brand in Russia could change the name of the mono-brand stores in Russia.

Finance

• The Bank of Russia intends to tighten the conditions for insuring bank cards and accounts against fraud. Such policies must include the risk of theft of funds through social engineering. Now they do not protect bank cards from such cases.
• The number of service offers for the release of assets of Russian investors blocked on foreign crypto exchanges is growing on the dark web. This is possible, for example, when withdrawing funds to an unlocked account, reissuing accounts with the reset of the KYC condition, etc. However, the services can be expensive, from 35 to 85% of the value of the assets.
• Whoosh expects an initial public offering at the lower end of the 185 ruble per share price range. At this placement price, the capitalization of the scooter rental service will amount to 20.6 billion rubles. The company will name the final price on December 14 after the closing of the collection of applications.
• Goznak allowed the return to circulation of five-ruble notes. They may be released next year. The new “old” banknotes will be improved by varnishing them.

Business

• The Qiwi financial service bought a large advertising agency Realweb. The amount of the transaction is not disclosed. A Forbes source says that before the start of the special operation, the agency brokered a deal with a major European ad player, and the company was later valued “in an eight-figure dollar amount.”

• Spicy dishes may appear at the Vkusno-i Tochka restaurant chain to help keep you warm in the winter, said Alexander Govor, owner of the chain.

• Russian entrepreneurs Alexey Lukyanets and Alexander Danilov launched the alcohol delivery service Yep! in London. The platform offers personalized recommendations based on artificial intelligence. Lukyanets and Danilov invested £350,000 in the launch.

• Avito, together with the online clothing store Hooli, has launched its own collection of clothing and accessories. This is the first merchandising release in the service’s history.

• In 2023, it will decrease to 44%. A number of market participants, against the background of market saturation in the Moscow region and the departure of active users from the capital, resumed regional expansion.
• Hoteliers have revised their pricing policy for the 2023 summer season, making them less likely to resort to discounts and promotions for early bookings.
• The Verny retail chain will remove Mars products from its assortment in a few weeks. The reason is the supply of Mars products to the Verny network “under discriminatory conditions”: 11% more expensive than other retailers.
• Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Georgia topped the ranking of the most popular countries for Russians to invest in real estate abroad based on preliminary 2022 results.

The science

• Scientists from Sechenov University and the Medical University of Vienna have developed a vaccine against cat allergies. It has passed preclinical studies and is ready for clinical trials.

services and means

• VK holding abandoned its own search for mail. it is and began to use the Yandex search engine – since November, in the search column in the mail. ru, the inscription “Yandex Search” is displayed.

• VK has released a special application for Apple Watch. It presents the main functions of the VKontakte social network, such as music and messaging. Smartwatch owners will be able to reply to messages without a smartphone.

• The end-to-end business intelligence system Roistat has launched the “SMS targeting” service, which allows you to send SMS to site visitors, even if they did not leave a phone number.

• VK added NFT avatars, featured a token showcase, and announced the launch of an NFT marketplace. The NFT section will appear in the user profile, where you can place tokens from your collection and you can transfer existing digital assets through a special service.