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Weekly Lists
April 28, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 22
bne:TMT Robots lead Russian
start-up invasion of Dublin’s Silicon Docks
Telia scales back its Uzbek settlement to $1bn
A growing number of Russian start-ups involved in everything from robotics to gaming are fuelling Dublin’s fast-growing startup scene.
Some of these have been relocated from Moscow using funds and resources provided by an Irish government agency, while others have spun out of the Dublin operations of US tech giants such as Google and Facebook.
Private capital from the US, Russia and Ireland is now helping to underpin funding from the Competitive Start Fund, an initiative by the government agency Enterprise Ireland, which is luring “waves” of programmers and developers from Russia.
Nordic telecom operator Telia AB has scaled back the cost estimate of its looming settlement related to allegations that it paid out hun- dreds of millions of dollars in bribes to enter Uzbekistan’s mobile market in 2007, the company said on April 26.
US and Dutch authorities ordered Swedish telecom carrier Telia AB to pay $1.45bn to settle the allegations in 2016. Telia now projects the settlement at $1bn. Telia, along with Russian VimpelCom and MTS, is accused of bribing entities connected to Gulnara Karimova, the now disgraced eldest daughter of late Uzbek President Islam Karimov, to win licences to operate 3G and 4G services in the Uzbek mobile market. VimpelCom was fined $795m by the US and Dutch authorities for the bribes it paid in Uzbekistan.
Kazakhstan's largest mobile operator Kcell, controlled by Swe- den-based Telia, saw its net income fall by 42.7% to KZT3.799bn (€11.1mn) in the first quarter of 2017, the company said on April 26.
The economic slowdown and the sharp depreciation of the tenge in 2015 and 2016 have damaged the financials of Kazakhstan's telecom companies. They use foreign currency to import equip- ment, but their earnings are in the local currency.
Net sales increased by 0.1%, while operating income, excluding non-recurring items, fell by 20.4%. The company’s EBITDA de- clined by 12.1% in 1Q17.
Largest Kazakh mobile operator sees 42.7% decline in net income in Q1