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9.2.6 Agriculture corporate news
The state owned VTB Bank has bought up assets in the grain export business and now controls about a fifth of the business, Bloomberg reports. The bank, a vehicle for state-lead investments, started its shopping spree a year ago and has invested an estimated $1.5bn into port terminals, a rail-freight operator and a trader. As a result VTB now controls a fifth of Russian grain exports, according to the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies as cited by Bloomberg. Grain is the new oil with Russia’s expected to export an estimated 48mn tonnes this year from a bumper crop of 118mn tonnes. That is still not as good as the 52.4mn tonnes Russia exported from the 135.4mn tonnes it harvested in 2017, but it still means that it will earn some $25bn from grain exports this year – more than it earns from arms exports and second only to the raw materials exports. > Grain yields in Russia have been growing steadily in the last few years as the state pours money into agriculture for reasons of national security. The Ministry of Agriculture says that the volume of exported grain could double in the coming years. Russia has been the biggest grain exporter in the world over the last three years, but it looks like it will lose that title to Ukraine this year, which exported just under 50mn tonnes of grain after taking in a record breaking harvest of 70mn tonnes of grain in the agricultural year just ended on June 30.
9.2.7 TMT corporate news
Russian internet major and most valuable digital company Yandex has been accused by five various online services Avito, Cian, Profi.ru, 2gis, and ivi of breaching anti-trust law by limiting access to the services in Yandex search engine, Vedomosti daily reported on July 1 citing the complaint by the companies. Reportedly, the companies demand that Yandex provides third parties with all forms of search results on "commercial conditions equal for all market participants."
Europe’s leading internet company Yandex has launched a beta version of its food retail app Supercheck on its price comparison platform Yandex.Market, the company said on July 10. The app allows users to compare prices and assortments on a store level, form a basket, and get 1% cash back if a transaction is conducted, VTB Capital (VTBC) said in a note. The company aims to cover the leading food retail chains in Russia, including Magnit, X5 Retail Group, Metro, Maria-Ra, Azbuka Vkusa, Vkusvil, and Monetka. Online retail is growing in leaps and bounds even if traditional retail is in the doldrums on the back of six years of real income wage increase stagnation. Total retail turnover in Russia reached RUB2,689bn ($42.7bn) in May this year, up 1.4% year-on-year. However, the share of online retail has been growing exponentially and accounted for 4.8% of total retail turnover in 2018 – a number that is expected to double in the next six years. Yandex.Market is in the midst of reorganizing its strategy after a joint venture with state-owned retail banking behemoth Sberbank appeared to blow up this month. The two companies have been working for a year to set up a retail platform that already accounts for 10% of online sales, but according to reports by The Bell the partnership is about to end in divorce. Supercheck is a new attempt to enter the food retail segment, according to Kolbina, which is currently almost entirely offline and offers a total turnover of RUB15 trillion. Roundup
Russian internet major Mail.ru closed a long-term partnership with
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