Net Info owns the most popular Bulgarian free email service Abv.bg, online diretory Gbg.bg, video sharing site Vbox7.com and news portal Netinfo.bg. Net Info’s net sales amounted to EUR 2.3 million and EBITDA of EUR 1.2 million in 2007. The company, which employs 127 full-time staff, expected its net sales to double to EUR 4.6 million in 2008.

As a part of the deal, Sanoma will invite other shareholders of Net Info holding 15% of the shares to sell their shares and agreed with the remaining shareholders to buy their 17% of shares before 2011.

In Bulgaria, Sanoma has a leading position in consumer magazine publishing through its company Sanoma Bliasak Bulgaria. Koos Guis, CEO of Sanoma Magazines International said that through the acquisition Sanoma would immediately achieve similar market leading positions in digital media as it did in magazine publishing in Bulgaria.

In Russia, Independent Media, part of Sanoma Magazines recently acquired blogging business Webpark.ru and women’s portal Ameno.ru.

Lux Media publishes the fashion magazine Collezioni, real estate magazine Homes Overseas, and brides title Wedding. The company was founded in January 2005 and has 50 full-time staff. Its annual net sales reached EUR 4 million.

As a part of the deal, Independent Media will have an option to acquire the remaining 45% of Lux Media before 2012. Artyom Keand, the founder of Lux Media will remain with the company as General Director. The deal is expected to close the second quarter of 2008.

In its press release, SanomaWSOY said that the acquisition would strengthen Independent Media’s position in the luxury segment of the Russian glossy magazine market.

Independent Media’s title portfolio in Russia includes internationally known magazine brands Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, FHM, Men’s Health, Esquire, as well as the newspapers Vedomosti and The Moscow Times, among others.

In February 2005, Sanoma Magazines acquired Independent Media for an enterprise value of EUR 142 million or multiple of 2 to its annual net sales. Independent Media recently acquired blogging business Webpark.ru and women’s portal Ameno.ru.

NTK reported revenues of $216 million in 2007, up 74% from 2006. Its EBITDA doubled to $120 million in 2007. The company that recently changed its name from National Cable Networks (NKS) had 5.1 million households passed in the end of 2007, including 1.8 million in St. Petersburg and 0.6 million in Moscow. It had 111 thousand broadband Internet service subscribers. NTK’s shareholders are investment group Nafta with 98% stake and Delta Private Equity (2%).

National Media Group, which was set up in February 2008, owns majority of leading Russian TV channels: 68% of REN TV and 72% of TRK Petersburg -5th Channel. NMG’s shareholders include Bank ROSSIYA with 54.96% stake, steel group Severstal (19.49%), oil & gas producer Surgutneftegaz (19.49%), and insurance group SOGAZ (6.06%).

MTS was ranked 89^th in the BrandZ Top 100 list with a brand value of $8.1 billion. MTS reported revenues of $8.2 billion in 2007, up 29% from 2006. The company had 85 million subscribers in the end of March 2008. MTS and its associates and subsidiaries are licensed to provide GSM services in Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Armenia and Belarus with a total population of more than 230 million.

Google topped the BrandZ Ranking of the world’s Top 100 Most Powerful Brands for the second consecutive year with a value of $86.1 billion followed by GE at $71.4 billion and Microsoft at $70.8 billion.

Millward Brown also named Russia’s 2nd largest mobile phone operator Beeline among “brands to watch in future brand rankings”.

Beeline and MTS were named the best Russian brands in Interbrand Zintzmeyer & Lux’s third annual ranking of 40 most valuable Russian brands in October 2007.

Rambler Media has partnered with Hiro Media, an Israeli developer of ad-supported video-download technology, whose software allows to dynamically select advertisements that are suited to demographical information users provide when they sign-up for the service.

Rambler also agreed with TV channel TNT and TV series producer Starmedia to offer 400 hours of video content from their libraries starting from May 2008. It will increase to 1,000 hours of video content by the fall 2008.

The advertisers will be offered to buy advertisements at $350 per 1,000 video views. The initial monthly audience of Rambler Cinema is expected to reach 1 million users. Rambler Vision, a video sharing service of Rambler has 1.8 million monthly users, according to the company.

Wessen Group, which designs, manufactures and markets a comprehensive range of wiring devices, primarily switches and sockets, reported sales of EUR 24 million in 2007, of which 90% were in Russia. The company was founded in 1966, under the name of Potencial and adopted the Wessen brand in 2002. It employs about 1,800 people in its factory in the city of Kozmodemiansk and seven sales agencies across Russia.

Driven by the substantial growth in the Russian construction industry, Wessen’s sales have doubled in the past three years. The company is the leader in Russian residential market for electrical accessories with 30% share. The market is expected to grow annually by 15% in the next five years.

Ahlstrom Capital, which focuses on industrial and real estate private equity investments, including in Russia, acquired a 51% stake in Wessen Group in January 2005 and increased its holding to 70% in May 2007. The other 30% stake is owned by the management of Wessen.

In its previous Russian private equity transaction, Ahlstrom Capital sold 100% stake in the Russian flexible packaging company Akerlund & Rausing Kuban to Teich AG, part of the Austrian packaging group Constantia Packaging AG.

Ahlstrom Capital has also pledged to invest $5 million in Mint Capital II, a Russia-based private equity fund that focuses on the Russian consumer sector.

Odnoklassniki.ru has 15 million registered accounts and 5 million daily users. The social network is now growing by 100 thousand new accounts per day, mostly registered by new users from Russian regions. The site’s name is translated into English as “Classmates”. The site is sort of a blend between Classmates.com and Hot or Not. The company currently uses 140 computer servers for its service. It sells 728 x 90 top banners and 240 x 400 side banners at CPM rates of $0.7 - 1.7.

Odnoklassniki.ru was ranked the 7th online property in Russia with reach of 30% of the Russian internet audience in a recent comScore study.

In contrast, the 2nd largest Russian social networking site Vkontakte.ru, which is similar to Facebook and has over 10 million registered accounts, does not sell online advertising. The site recently started generating revenues from online recruitment services.

The recent drop in a number of active blogs in Russia can be explained by a growing popularity of online social networks.

Tipo is visited by more than 80% of Israeli children aged between 8 and 14 . The site features a unique environment for children to communicate to each other and is safe.

Tipo offers multiplayer online games, communication tools, blogging and video blogging, searching for new friends, storing pictures and videos, and tools to easily create virtual worlds.

The users of Tipo created over 870,000 personal web-sites over the past year.

Tweegee plans to launch Tweegee.com, a social networking site for kids in the U.S.

RBC’s news site RBC.ru was recently ranked among top Russian web properties with reach of 16% of the Russian internet audience.

In 2006, EPAM Systems received $25 million investment from private equity firm Siguler Guff & Company.

EPAM was founded in 1993 and merged with a U.S./Russian software development outsourcing company Vested Development, Inc. (VDI).

EPAM maintains U.S. headquarters in Lawrenceville, NJ, and European headquarters in Budapest, Hungary, as well as support and delivery operations in the U.K. and Germany. The company employs over 4,000 software developers in Russia, Belarus, Hungary, and Ukraine. Its major clients include SAP, BEA Systems, Microsoft, Oracle, Reuters, and Colgate-Palmolive.

EPAM recently acquired Plusmicro in Kazakhstan and B2BITS Corp.

Da Vinci Capital Management, which has $250 million of assets under management, is 50% - 50% joint venture between Oleg Jelezko and BSG.  The join venture was formed in the summer of 2007. Oleg Jelezko was previously head of the Equity Structured Products Group within Renaissance Capital. BSG is a privately held international investment group with over 30 years experience investing in global capital markets, real estate, commodities, precious metals, and oil and gas.

There are 3.8 million Russian blogs, up 23% from October 2007. Only 20% of Russian blogs are updated once every three months (active accounts), down from 30% last October. The most popular blogging platforms LiveJournal and LiveInternet.ru have 230 thousand and 160 thousand active accounts, respectively.

Some 75% of all Russian blogs are hosted by four blogging services: LiveInternet.ru, LiveJournal.com, Blogs@Mail.ru, and Diary.ru (see the right column below), out of more than 80 services in total. Some 200 thousand blog posts are made every day. There are 230 thousand different user communities (see the central column below) in the Russian blogosphere, out of which 25% are active. The most active communities are on LiveJournal where 45% of bloggers belong at least to one community.

The study reveals that a growth in new blogs has slow down significantly as well as number of active blogs has declined. It can be explained by a huge popularity of online social networks in Russia that take active users and audience away from blogs. If the number of blogs increased by only 0.7 million over the past six months, the number of social networking users grew by over 10 million over the same period.

The market experts estimate that blog advertising in Russia will reach $36 million in 2008, up from $20 million in 2007. In comparison, the revenue of the most popular Russian social networking site Odnoklassniki.ru is estimated to reach over $10 million in 2008. According to comScore, top Russian social networking sites have the strongest engagements among top web-sites in Russia.