Law enforcement officers searched the office of one of Ukraine’s largest IT company MacPaw and the home of its founder Alexander Kosovan on Wednesday in connection with the land plots acquired by the company to implement an investment project.
“MacPaw’s office and my personal home were searched. Even during a full-scale war, officials find a reason, time and way to pressure Ukrainian businesses,” Kosovan said on Facebook.
According to him, the reason for the searches were questions about land plots that MacPaw legally acquired between 2016 and 2021.
“Before the searches, we provided investigators with all the necessary documents. That is, the searches in our case are an optional measure, but the civil servants decided otherwise,” he stressed.
Kosovan did not rule out that because of the imperfection of the land legislation and because of the outdated regulation “some mistakes could have been made by the officials.
According to him, the dialogue with the local authorities to correct the mistakes and create an interesting and valuable project takes more than three years on the issue of land plots, which were the reason for the searches.
“However, after we invested tens of millions of dollars in the development of the plots, the officials became interested in them, and now they are trying to take away these lands and the asset,” Kosovan said.
In turn, co-founder of monobank Oleg Gorokhovsky suggested on his Facebook page that the searches were related to the fact that “the land plots turned out to be on someone’s wish list.”
“Alexander Kosovan will not be offended. One of the most decent and dignified people I know. A philanthropist, a visionary, a patriot. I think someone simply has his land on their wish list for this year,” he said.
As Gorokhovsky stressed, MacPaw is an international company with many international awards. The company is a resident of Dia.City.
According to information in the database of court decisions, law enforcers have claims to MacPaw Property Management LLC in connection with the implementation of the construction project of the recreation complex “IT-Relax” on the territory of Tsyblivska village united community (Boryspil district of Kyiv region). Criminal proceedings were opened in June 2021. The main charges were inappropriate use of agricultural land and construction of real estate within 100 meters of the Dnieper River’s regulatory and coastal protective strip.
Founded by Kosovan in 2008, MacPaw is a software development company. Its main products are CleanMyMac X, ClearVPN, Setapp and Gemini, Unarchiver. Declared number of users exceeds 30 million.
Top managers of the largest Wall Street banks in recent days gave more optimistic assessments of the prospects for the U.S. economy compared with previous forecasts, writes the Financial Times.
In particular, bankers now see a higher probability that the Federal Reserve will be able to provide a so-called “soft landing,” that is, to combat high inflation, while managing to avoid recession.
“The consensus among corporate executives has shifted slightly in a more positive direction. The sagging economy is now expected to be milder than many expected six months ago,” Goldman Sachs Group chief David Solomon said Tuesday at an event hosted by Credit Suisse.
A positive tone also prevailed in a speech by Bank of America Corp. Brian Moynihan, who noted the high consumer activity and resilient profitability of mid-cap companies.
“Consumers have money. They have jobs, they’re spending money and taking out loans,” Moynihan said at a conference on financial services.
Wells Fargo Chief Financial Officer Michael Santomassimo also pointed to “very good consumer spending data.”
Such comments contrasted with statements by bank executives last year when they expressed serious concerns about the state of the U.S. economy, notes the FT.
Despite the growth of optimism, grounds for concern remain. In particular, the head of Goldman Sachs said that the future trajectory of inflation is still unclear, high rates of growth in consumer prices can be observed for quite some time, which will affect the economy as a whole.
“I think we’re going to see weaker, slower growth for a while,” Solomon said.
Earlier, the Club of Experts consolidated and analyzed economic indicators of Ukraine and the world, more details in the video at the link
Kernel Ukrainian Agro-Industrial Group received an award from the UN Global Compact in Ukraine for its contribution to the creation of an anti-corruption video course. The course explains the principles of transparent business conduct and anti-corruption practices for small and medium enterprises.
According to the holding’s Facebook page, it joined the circle of organizations that worked on the development of the UN Global Compact’s Anti-Corruption program in Ukraine.
It is specified that the video course consists of five training modules lasting 5-8 minutes each, which reveal the principles of transparent business conduct and anti-corruption practices in Ukraine. You can watch the educational series on the portal “Diya.Biznes” and the platform “Diya.Digital Education”.
The course is designed to deepen entrepreneurs’ knowledge of anti-corruption processes to keep the country’s economy healthy.
“Kernel” before the war was the world’s number one producer of sunflower oil (about 7% of world production) and its exports (about 12%), and was the largest producer and seller of bottled sunflower oil in Ukraine. In addition, the company was involved in other agricultural products cultivation and sales.
The largest co-owner of Kernel, through Namsen Ltd. is Ukrainian businessman Andrei Verevskyi, with a 39.3% stake.
In FY2022 (July-2021 – June-2022), the holding posted net loss of $41 mln against $506 mln net profit in the previous FY. Its revenue decreased by 5% – to $5.332 bln, while EBITDA decreased 3.7 times – to $220 mln.
Last year Ukraine produced 1.13 million tons of nitrogen fertilizers, which is 4.6 times less compared to 5.2 million tons in 2021, while their import rose 3.1 times – to 4.3 million tons from 1.4 million tons, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine said on Facebook.
The Ministry specified with reference to the head of the analytical project “Infoindustry” Dmitry Gordeichuk that the volume of domestic production of nitrogen fertilizers in Ukraine before the full-scale Russian invasion exceeded imports due to continuous operation of plants “Rivneazot”, “Azot” North Donetsk Association and “Azot” Cherkasy, “Dniproazot” also worked with intervals.
However, according to him, with the beginning of the war only two plants “Rivneazot” and Cherkasy “Azot” remained working, while Severodonetsk “Azot” stopped working and was significantly damaged by the occupants. Such changes significantly changed the statistics on the market for the worse: as a result, only 1.13 million tons of fertilizers could be produced in 2022, the lack of which compensated for the import of 4.3 million tons.
“The topic of fertilizer shortage is one of the most urgent for the agricultural sector and Ukrainian farmers, because we are waiting for the spring sowing season, which the whole world will be watching. Ukraine is one of the leading countries on the agricultural map and its production volume determines the world price on the grain market and the food security of the world. Accordingly, the liquidity of farmers is a topical issue for the Ministry of Agrarian Policy” – quotes Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Solskyy as saying.
According to the Minister, until July 2022 Ukrainian farmers were still able to buy fertilizers at pre-war prices, but in October the prices for ammonium nitrate rose from 27 thousand UAH / ton to 37 thousand UAH / ton, which created a critical situation for the Ukrainian farmers. He stressed that usually farmers are guided by the rule, according to which a ton of nitrate must not cost more than 2.5 tons of wheat and a ton of urea – not more than 3.0-3.5 tons of corn, while in 2022 these figures were exceeded two or three times.
Ministry of Agrarian Policy noted that today it is difficult to calculate the exact cost of fertilizers for modern Ukrainian agrarian, but the cost of basic nitrogen fertilizer per 1 ha of corn is approximately 8-9 thousand UAH without fertilizing and fuel costs, which have also increased in price. Therefore, the final amount is not attractive for the agrarian at the moment.
“Much depends on climatic conditions, because fertilizers work as a complex nutrition and the main thing is weather conditions. But if the agrarian will apply less fertilizer by 30% or more, then the drop in yield can be twofold. Therefore, support of international partners in this matter is very important to us, “- First Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy Taras Vysotsky quotes it.
As previously reported, according to estimates of Group DF, the main fertilizer producer in Ukraine, the fertilizer market of the country in 2022 decreased by 45-50% – from 4.75 million tons to 2-2.9 million tons.
According to Euromonitor International, in 2022 16% of global internet connected consumers visited online dating or matchmaking website at least weekly. Males are more frequent online dating websites’ visitors. 1 in 6 men globally report doing it at least weekly compared to 1 in 7 women saying the same. In comparison to the data from the year of pandemic start there is a considerable increase in amount of people frequently visiting online dating sites – from 12% in 2019 to 16% in 2022 visiting at least weekly with noticeable regional differences:
– Asia Pacific: from 12% at least weekly in 2019 to 17% in 2022
– Europe: from 10% in 2019 to 13% in 2022
– North America: from 10% in 2019 to 13% in 2022
– Middle East and Africa: from 14% in 2019 to 25% in 2022
– Millennials and Baby Boomers are the most frequent users of online dating websites with 1 in 6 millennials and 1 in 7 baby boomers visiting them at least weekly
– Baby Boomers adapted online dating most rapidly during the pandemic – 78% said that they had never visited online dating websites in 2019 while only 68% said the same in 2022
Ruta Sventickyte, Survey Analyst – Euromonitor International:
“The search for romance is rapidly moving online, particularly in a post-pandemic world where consumers of all ages have integrated digital interactions into many aspects of life. Visiting online dating or matchmaking websites is becoming increasingly popular globally. In regions where strict pandemic restrictions were applied for the longest period of time (Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa) we see an even more pronounced increase in the frequency of online dating websites visits. With more people visiting these websites at least weekly, we also see a drop in people who report never doing so too.”
Source: Euromonitor International Voice of the Consumer: Lifestyle Survey, fielded January to February 2022, n=39,832.
The U.S. dollar rose moderately against the euro and pound sterling Wednesday morning as traders assessed U.S. inflation data for January.
The ICE-calculated index, which shows how the U.S. dollar is performing against six currencies (euro, Swiss franc, yen, Canadian dollar, pound sterling and Swedish krona), is up 0.2% in morning trading.
The euro/dollar pair is trading at $1.0716 at 7:43 a.m. versus $1.0737 at the close of Tuesday’s session, the euro is losing about 0.2%.
As it became known the day before, consumer prices (CPI) in the U.S. rose by 6.4% in January compared to the same month last year. Thus, inflation slowed down from 6.5% in December.
However, analysts had expected a much more significant weakening in the pace of price growth, to an average of 6.2%, according to Trading Economics. The slower-than-expected slowdown in inflation raises the possibility that the Fed will continue to stay tight on monetary policy.
Now the market is waiting for U.S. retail sales data for January, which will be released at 4:30 p.m. Moscow time on Wednesday to better gauge the health of the U.S. economy. According to the consensus forecast, sales jumped 1.8% year-over-year last month after falling 1.1% in December.
The pound is 0.2 percent cheaper, trading at $1.2152 versus $1.2174 at the close of last session.
The dollar/yen exchange rate is at 133.05 yen compared to 133.12 yen the day before.
