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Opinion
July 6, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 27
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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if some of their citizens tend to view it as a more trustworthy partner than the US. The increase
in gas dependency in certain countries reflects the difficulties of swiftly developing viable alternative energy sources. The fixed nature of gas infrastructures makes it far too costly for the import of, for example, US liquefied natural gas (LNG) via Lithuania or Croatia to be viable.
Political posturing, especially by populists, can thus largely be relegated to secondary status with respect to providing a clear outlook of the EU policy consensus on Russia. This is illustrated by Slovakia: former Prime Minister Robert Fico repeatedly called the Russian sanctions into question, but this was nothing more than populist tub-thumping. Slovakia, which earns a hefty fee on the transit of Russian gas via Ukraine, stands to lose considerably from Nord Stream II.
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Sanctions, in summary, have left the Russia doves sufficient scope to pursue targeted cooperation
on specific projects, almost all of which are energy-related. Besides gas, Hungary, Czechia and Bulgaria have all either contracted or eyed-up Rosatom to expand their nuclear power capacity in major facilities.
However, this is very likely to change on account of the variable that is the Trump administration. The US addition of publicly-listed Russian compa- nies with a global presence to the list of targeted entities has expanded the reach of the sanctions significantly, with an impact on European manu- facturing, which is facing aluminium supply short- ages as a result – not to mention the US tariffs
on EU steel and aluminium products. The Trump administration has also mooted that EU energy companies engaged in Nord Stream II could be targeted under legislation that was already passed by Congress in 2017. This would include OMV, Ger- many’s Wintershall and Uniper, the Netherlands/ UK Royal Dutch Shell and France’s Engie.
A response from the EU, should this take place, would be likely – although the problems of