Russian Navigational Technologies, one of the leaders of the Russian GLONASS/GPS Russian navigational system market is looking at the possibility of conducting an IPO on the MICEX in the innovation/growth sector this year. A decision on preparation for IPO was made at the board of director’s meeting of RNT and supported by VTB Asset Management, which controls a majority of shares through its VTB Venture Fund.
Source: Unova
According to the press service of the cabinet of minister’s of the Republic of Tatarstan, Troika Dialog invested 500 million rubles in 2009 in small innovative enterprises in the region.
Adalet Djabiev is the founder and CEO of Al-Shams Capital, an Islamic investment and financial company incorporated in Russia and regulated by the Russian Securities Commission. Although the Russian Securities Commission doesn’t have explicitly recognize Islamic finance, CEO Djabiev says that Al-Shams is by its nature and through the company’s articles of memorandum, a Shariah-compliant company.
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko met with a team from the Rothschild Group last week and has invited the group to provide valuation services for enterprises slated for privatization in the republic and to advise the government on their privatization program.
The team also met with senior members of the government and the leadership of the national bank.
“If agreed in principle, we could identify five to seven projects in the near future and develop them more seriously,” said Lukashenko.
Russian agricultural leaders will be participating in one of Europe’s largest agricultural conferences, – Salon International de L’Agriculture (SIA) 2010, from February 27 to March 7 in Paris, where they will present specific direct investment and joint venture opportunities in Russia’s agricultural sector.
AllEquityFunds has published the first issue of its new English language magazine on the Private Equity industry in Russia. The issue is free for download to all registered site users. (note: registration is free, but it isn’t instantaneous. There’s an approval process that usually takes a day or so.)
No word if this will continue to be free going forward, but it looks like a great resource.
The story of Russian brokerage Otkritie is the story of the development of high frequency and algorithmic trading on the Russian equities markets.
If you look at the following chart of the dollar-denominated RTS index, one feature stands out: volumes rise dramatically towards the end of November 2009.
The reason for this dramatic rise in volume, according to the FT, was the adoption of new regulations, which allowed traders to offset P&L realized from trades on the cash equities market against security, commodity and index futures and options on FORTS.
The EBRD recently announced its new strategy for Kazakhstan, which will define the priorities for the organization’s investments and lending activities in the country for the next three years.
The bank will seek to assist Kazakhstan to diversify its economy away from natural resources by supporting projects promoting innovation, best business and environmental practices and energy efficiency.
The FT published a piece today on technology venture capital in Russia, or the lack thereof. SQ7WHTXYZE6U
Several reasons were given for the current lack of activity in technology venture capital and private equity in the Russian market, including high risks, the lack of a technology focused exchange and the lack of stock options for managers.
Alexandra Johnson, of DFJ-VTB Aurora, specifically sited the lack of good managers. Interestingly, Draper Fisher Jurveston‘s Russian JV partner VTB just announced a stock option plan worth 1% of its shares for its own top managers. It has yet to win the required state approval for the program, however.
Also name-checked were Web Media Group, which has invested $20 million in online properties, Digital Sky Technologies (of Russian social networking and Facebook fame) and Luxoft, Russia’s largest offshore programming outsourcer.
Russian contextual advertising agency iConText estimates that the volume of the online contextual advertising market in Russia in 2009 was 9.61 billion rubles before VAT, a 13% growth in ruble terms over the previous year (8.5 billion rubles in 2008).
In dollar terms, the total market size was down about 7% to $320 million from $344 million in 2008.
According to its report, revenues of Yandex.Direct, were 7.5 billion rubles, or 78% of the total contextual advertising market.
Besides Yandex there are two other players on the Russian contextual advertising market - Google, with an estimated 10% market share and revenues of 1.01 billion rubles (a 50% increase over 2008) and “Begun” («Бегун») with 11% market share and revenues of 1.10 billion rubles.
Several sources this week are reporting the size of the Russian display advertising market grew 10% in 2009 to $261 million. We’re not so sure.
The original story was pulled from a Feb. 2009 press release from Russian digital marketing agency AdWatch, which reported impressive 2008 growth in online ATL advertising to $207 million (35% over 2007). The press release went on to forecast 25% growth in 2009, which would bring the size of the market up to $261 million.
Our first reaction to this would be that 2009 probably didn’t go as planned.
That being said, global figures for online advertising were very impressive through Q3 last year. After a rocky first half, revenues were up slightly, with a 5.4% drop in revenues y-o-y by the fourth quarter – vastly superior results to traditional advertising, which in some sectors fell as much as 30%.
We’re still waiting for reliable figures for the Russian market, but we’d hold off on declaring a banner year – similar performance to the US in this sector would suggest incredible resilience, though, and is something to keep a close eye on.
AdWatch was purchased for $20 million in a 2008 private equity transaction by Aegis Group plc and is now part of the Isobar online advertising network.
Rating Agency Expert RA has published a report showing the private equity and direct investment potential of the various regions of Russia.
The report provides a point by point breakdown of various risks as well as the upside potential and the changing dynamics of the various regions.
The ‘Main Threats’ section breaks down downside risks and upside potential to the private equity investor in the areas of: Criminal Risk, Governance Risk, Social Risk, Economic Risk, Legal Risk and Environmental Risk; showing positive trends throughout in the country as a whole.
Regional consumer markets, on the other hand, are not shown to be a cause for optimism, with undeveloped infrastructure being a major obstacle for investors. Still, the largest continued upside potential continues to be redistributed from larger to smaller regions – especially those with developed agricultural and manufacturing sectors.
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