Page 21 - bne_newspaper_August_17_2018

Eastern Europe
August 17, 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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national currencies and eschew the dollar. Turkey this week also sold off most of its US T-bills
and so like Russia took itself out of the top 30 biggest holders of US debt. Despite being a Nato member, Ankara, like Moscow, has been hit by US sanctions. The sanctions were imposed in
the row over Turkey’s detention and prosecution of US pastor Andrew Brunson on espionage and terrorism charges. When Donald Trump last week also doubled tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminium exports, the suspicion was that that was also a response to the Brunson case and perhaps also to Turkey’s refusal to fall in line with US sanctions on neighbour Iran.
The row between Turkey and the US deteriorated as Albayrak made fiery comments including “they’ll lose their arm in an attempt at cutting off our beard”.
Turkey and Iran working on it
Turkey and Iran are already working on settling import and export flows in their respective national currencies rather than the dollar—in fact Iran is now banned from acquiring US banknotes under reimposed American sanctions and some of its lawmakers are pushing for all trade with Turkey, Russia, Iran, India and other markets to be shifted as quickly as possible to non-dollar transactions—and China is on board with the idea of settling trade in national currencies. In 2008, none of the $56.8bn Sino-Russian bilateral trade was settled in local currencies, but last year about a quarter of the $84bn in trade was.
China, locked in a trade war with Washington, has not sold US T-bill holdings, but as the
largest holder of US debt, with $1.18 trillion of US bonds, getting out of the bonds would be very challenging. If Beijing started selling aggressively the price of the bonds would collapse, destroying much of the value of China’s sovereign reserves. Collapsing the US bond market would also lead to a full-blown diplomatic crisis that could easily spin out of control. If China becomes minded to exit the US bond market, it will do so slowly and over a long period.