Page 21 - bne_newspaper_November_02_2018

Eurasia
November 2, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 21
bne:Tech
May, 2018 www.intellinews.com @bneintellinews
Avast to enter London bourse in bid to raise up to $1bn Jaroslav Hroch in Prague
Avast, which owns the popular consumer antivirus company AVG, will apply to list its shares on the London Stock Exchange in the hope of raising $200mn (CZK4.1bn) in primary proceeds from an IPO, the Czech-founded company announced on April 12.
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St Petersburg's start-up scene flourishes on high talent and low costs
Contents
Avast to enter London bourse
in bid to raise up to $1bn 1 Avast to enter London bourse in bid to raise up to $1bn 2 St Petersburg's start-up scene
flourishes on high talent and low costs 3 Romania entrepreneur aims to put home-grown UAV defence technology industry on the map 6
FinTech
Russia's mobile major MTS increases stake in Ozon to 16.7% 9
Blockchain
Romanian startups at the heart
of blockchain energy trading rally 10
Central Europe
Russian-Lithuanian startup Gosu.ai
raises $1.9mn from Russian and
French investors 13
Eurasia
Iran hit by cyber attack that left US
flag on screens 14 Iranian government set to block hugely popular Telegram messaging app 15 Iran's black market phone disconnection drive pushes up legal mobile imports 15
Eastern Europe
Internet catches up with TV on Russian
ad market 17 Sales of connected appliances jump
in Russia 17 Russia's HeadHunter Group seeks
to raise $250mn with NASDAQ IPO 18 Russia ranks second in the world
for digital piracy 18 Russian messaging service Telegram raised another $850mn with ICO 19
Southeast Europe
Russia's HeadHunter Group seeks
to raise $250mn with NASDAQ IPO 20
The Regions This Month 21
Filip Brokes in St Petersburg
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that their country carried out more business reforms than any other country featuring in the World Bank ranking.
“Getting electricity in Azerbaijan became faster and cheaper, with a reduction in the time it takes for a business to get connected to the grid from 56 to 41 days,” a World Bank press release on the ranking said.
Baku’s construction permitting process was streamlined, with permits now issued only by the Baku City Executive Office’s single window, the survey report on Azerbaijan further noted.
In its comments on the Doing Business perfor- mance of Turkey — in which Azerbaijan now ranks as the top foreign investor given new gas pipeline investments and the opening of a $6.3bn oil refin- ery — the World Bank said in a press release that “starting a business in Turkey became easier with the elimination of the minimum paid-in capital requirement”.
It added: “Other improvements involved elec- tronic processing of documents and provision of more information related to payment of taxes and improved access to credit. However, an increase in the cost of transferring property in Turkey made property registration more difficult.”
In the past two years, investors in Turkey have been rattled by both the gradual crumbling of the country’s economic prosperity and the two-year- long state of emergency, which ended in July after the snap elections. Brought in after the failed July 2016 coup, the emergency regime led to massive purges of state workers, the detention of tens of thousands and the seizure by the state of scores of substantial businesses seen as owned by per- sons with alleged links to the plotters blamed for the attempted putsch.