X5: Olympics deal won’t hold off Magnit’s rise for long
Coming soon: sportswear for dogs
X5, the Russian food retailer controlled by Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Group, has won a tender for rights to market official merchandise for the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.
The prestigious deal may boost the appeal of X5’s grocery stores but probably comes too late to prevent the London-listed retailer from being overtaken by its fast growing rival Magnit in the battle for sales. Continue reading »
Russia’s dreams of Olympic glory get more expensive
If the 2014 Olympics in Sochi is a big pie, then Olympstroy’s piece just got a little bigger. According to a new report released by the Regional Development Ministry this week, the state corporation’s budget for designing and building the Games facilities has more than doubled from 143.6bn roubles ($4.9bn) to 304bn roubles.
Dmitry Kozak, the government official in charge of Sochi, was quick to assure reporters yesterday that the change in figures was simply due to a redistribution of resources within the federal budget. Yet the murky numbers raise further questions about the transparency of the Sochi preparations, and Russia’s other big infrastructure projects, such as the 2018 World Cup. Continue reading »
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