Page 25 - BNE_magazine_12_2019 dec19

bne December 2019 Companies & Markets I 25
Draft law limiting foreign ownership of Russian tech companies softened to set 49% cap
bne IntelliNews
The draft law on limiting foreign investors' share
of “strategically important” tech companies has been considerable softened with the cap on foreign ownership increased from 20% to 49%, BMB reported.
The controversial bill was introduced by Duma deputy Anton Gorelkin and mirrors a similar bill that has already been enacted to limit foreign ownership of media outlets to 20%.
When the original draft was presented in October the shares in Russia’s biggest and most valuable tech company Yandex crashed but the backlash against the more stringent version has been substantial as Russia’s tech sector is booming.
Believing passage of the legislation to be inevitable, Russia’s leading business lobby group, the Russian Union of Industrialists
and Entrepreneurs (RUIE), has come out in support of the government’s proposed changes to Gorelkin’s draft law.
The compromise has been to increase the cap from 20%
to 49%, which given the structure of shareholding in both Yandex and its closest rival Mail.ru means no one will have to sell any shares.
“If the bill only considers voting shares, tech giants Yandex and Mail.ru will not need to alter their ownership structures,” BMB said in a note.
“Judging by Gorelkin’s reaction to the government’s proposal, the Kremlin seems likely to accept this compromise. This will mean temporary relief for Yandex. But don’t expect the Kremlin to give up on its ongoing efforts to bring Yandex to heel.”
Georgia’s Bitcoin mining “sucking its power grid dry”
bne IntelliNews
Georgia is now the world’s third largest Bitcoin miner, behind China and Venezuela. The scale of the mining pursued by the small country’s cryptocurrency farms is such that it is “sucking the power grid dry” as the enterprises account for some 10% of the country’s electricity consumption some estimates contend, according to a BBC Business Daily podcast “A hydro-powered Bitcoin boom in Georgia”.
The problem is reportedly particularly acute in Svaneti region, where consumers are exempt from paying for electricity because of harsh living conditions – the situation fostered the development of grey economy Bitcoin mining businesses “patronised by high- ranking officials” according to locals quoted by Kommersant daily. Frequent power outages are apparently endured by locals.
David Chapashvili from Green Energy, an environmental pressure group, was cited in the podcast as criticising the cryptocurrency mining practice for how much electricity it consumes.
A BitFury-owned Bitcoin mining farm is “guzzling” up 4%
of the country’s electricity, or 389.7 million kWh in absolute terms, alone, according to documents presented by the Green Energy representative.
Chapashvili said the country actually has no understanding of the total impact cryptocurrency mining is having on its energy consumption.
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