The Madrid High Court rejected Airbnb’s request to suspend payment of a €64 million fine imposed by the Spanish Ministry of Consumer Affairs and ordered the company to pay the fine while the case is pending. This was reported by Spanish media, and the move is part of a broader campaign by Spanish authorities to tighten control over the short-term rental market.
According to a report by El País, the fine was imposed in December 2025 and is equivalent to approximately six times the amount of “illegally obtained profits” that, according to Spanish authorities, Airbnb received as a result of its controversial advertising practices. The court ruling, published on March 23, specifically concerns the denial of a stay of proceedings, meaning it does not resolve the dispute on its merits but prevents the company from postponing payment until a final verdict.
Spanish authorities justified the sanction based on three main violations. These include the publication of listings for tourist accommodations without the required license number, the use of false or incorrect registration data, and misleading information regarding the legal status of landlords. All of this was classified in Madrid as forms of unfair or misleading advertising.
Airbnb, in turn, stated that the court’s decision is procedural in nature and does not address the substance of the dispute, and that the company itself considers the fine to be contrary to Spanish and European law. The company has already appealed the sanction and is continuing its legal defense.
The case is unfolding against the backdrop of a general tightening of Spain’s policies regarding short-term rentals. According to Reuters, in the summer of 2025, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs announced that it had secured the removal of 65,000 Airbnb listings deemed to be in violation of the rules, and subsequently identified nearly 55,000 more listings lacking the required license numbers. Authorities link this campaign to efforts to ease the pressure of tourist rentals on the housing market and curb rising rent rates for local residents.
Spain as a whole has been tightening restrictions on short-term rentals over the past two years. In particular, in March 2025, one of the country’s highest courts upheld Barcelona’s plan to completely phase out short-term rental licensing by 2028. This underscores that Airbnb’s conflict with regulators is part of a broader shift in Spanish housing policy toward restricting short-term rentals in overheated tourist areas.
For the real estate market and the tourism sector, this means an increase in regulatory risks for short-term rental platforms in Spain.
For the platforms themselves, the key issue is no longer just the scale of the business, but also the ability to quickly adapt to new requirements regarding licensing, transparency of listings, and disclosure of information about property owners.
Ukraine and Singapore have intensified negotiations on opening the market to Ukrainian pork and finalizing the procedures for beginning its export, according to the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection (SSFSCP).
According to the report, during a visit to Singapore, a delegation from the agency, led by its head Serhiy Tkachuk, discussed with the leadership of the Singapore Food Agency the accreditation of Ukrainian enterprises in accordance with previously submitted applications.
“Ukraine already has experience cooperating with Singapore. To date, five forms of veterinary certificates for export have been agreed upon: heat-treated and canned meat products, poultry meat, table eggs, egg products, and pet food,” Tkachuk emphasized.
The trip also included a meeting with representatives of the Meat Traders Association (Singapore). Singaporean companies expressed interest in sourcing Ukrainian pork to diversify imports and strengthen food security.
For their part, representatives of the Meat Industry Association and Ukrainian exporters presented their production capacities and quality standards. The host side familiarized the Ukrainian delegation with the technologies used to prepare meat for sale in Singapore’s retail chains.
Following the meetings, agreements were reached on further cooperation to facilitate Ukrainian businesses’ entry into this market.
The NOVA Group of Companies, which includes Nova Poshta, announced the creation of a new position of Chief People Officer (CPO)—a role responsible for building the management team and developing a unified HR system across the entire international group, according to a post on LinkedIn.
The CPO’s main responsibilities include recruiting top-tier talent for the senior management team, ensuring their onboarding, evaluation, development, and retention; implementing approaches to recruitment, evaluation, development, and retention of employees; and launching an end-to-end system for goal-setting and performance evaluation.
Other responsibilities of the CPO include transforming the HR function into a strategic business partner and establishing a succession planning system for key roles.
It is noted that the company expects the candidate to have more than 10 years of experience in HR in leadership positions at international companies, experience in building N-1 and N-2 management teams with A-class talent, as well as experience implementing HR strategies during periods of growth and change and experience in building a unified management culture across different countries.
In addition, the Nova Post group of companies offers conditions where the CPO will be part of the group’s top management team, reporting to the co-CEOs and the supervisory board, along with a high salary, to be discussed individually based on the results of the interview.
Other benefits include health insurance and other perks provided for the position, with the employment type being a contract and a hybrid work format (Kyiv).
Last week, Nova Poshta co-owner Vyacheslav Klimov announced the group’s five-year plan to rise from 30th place among global express delivery and postal services to the top 20, increasing shipment volume from 0.5 billion to 2 billion, follow the U.S. in entering the Canadian and Chinese markets this year, and double the number of countries where Nova Post Europe operates to 32 by 2028.
The core business of Nova Poshta, the main asset of the NOVA Group, is the express delivery of documents, parcels, and palletized oversized cargo. Its ultimate beneficial owners are Volodymyr Poperechnyuk and Vyacheslav Klimov.
“Corum Druzhkivka Machine-Building Plant” (Dnipro) is manufacturing 30 freight cars with a load capacity of 6 tons for the company’s mines in March, according to the machine-building Corum Group, a subsidiary of “DTEK Energy.”
“One mine car can carry up to 6 tons of cargo at a time, has a service life of up to 10 years, and covers over 16,000 km of underground routes,” the statement reads.
The post notes that after the plant’s relocation, this model had to be adapted: some parts were redesigned and adjusted to fit universal equipment.
Corum Group is a leading manufacturer of mining equipment in Ukraine. It is part of DTEK Energy—an operating company responsible for coal mining and coal-fired power generation within Rinat Akhmetov’s DTEK energy holding.
“Corum DrMZ,” relocated to Dnipro in 2022, manufactured 358 units of underground mining transport in 2025, along with over 935,000 spare parts and components, and more than 400 metal structures. Repairs of KPD shearers have become a separate area of focus.
DTEK Energy’s machine-building assets include the Druzhkivka Machine-Building Plant, the Kharkiv-based “Svitlo Shakhtaria” plant, and the Pershotravensk Machine-Building Plant.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is building a portfolio of private investments in renewable energy and battery energy storage systems (BESS) in Ukraine for 2026, with a total capacity of over 1 GW.
“The EBRD is building a portfolio for 2026 and plans to support such transactions as early as this year,” the EBRD’s Ukraine Facebook page reported on March 24.
Specifically, the EBRD plans to attract investors to projects involving the construction of approximately 570 MW of wind power plants, 240 MW of solar generation, and 230 MW of storage systems.
“All these projects are private investments. As Arvid Türkner, the EBRD’s Head of Operations in Ukraine and Moldova, emphasizes, private sector participation is critical,” the statement noted.
As the EBRD emphasized, this is precisely why RAMP UP was created—a joint initiative of the EBRD and the World Bank that stabilizes revenues from renewable energy and unlocks large-scale private investment.
“The goal is to accelerate the sector so that Ukraine’s potential can be harnessed as soon as conditions improve. The first auctions are expected in 2026,” the bank states.
Shareholders of PJSC “Volodymyr-Volynskyi Poultry Farm” and JSC “Volodymyr-Volynskyi Agrarian Company” (Fedorivka village, Volyn region) and Avesterra Group plan to approve the results of financial and economic activities for 2025 and determine the procedure for distributing profits and losses at the annual general meeting on April 29, 2026.
According to a disclosure in the information disclosure system of the National Securities and Stock Market Commission (NSSMC), PJSC “Volodymyr-Volynskyi Poultry Farm” will not pay dividends due to the absence of net profit for the previous year and plans to cover losses using future profits.
Meanwhile, shareholders of JSC “Volodymyr-Volynskyi Agrarian Company” plan to allocate 100% of net profit for 2025 to retained earnings. No dividend payments are planned for this asset either.
The agenda for the meetings of both companies, which will be held remotely via a survey, includes the approval of the reports of the executive bodies and supervisory boards for 2025, with their work deemed satisfactory.
According to financial indicators in the Opendatabot system, PJSC “Volodymyr-Volynskyi Poultry Farm” ended 2025 with a net loss of UAH 10.24 million (in 2024, profit amounted to UAH 23.07 million). The company’s net revenue for the reporting period fell by a factor of 3.2 to UAH 150.93 million. As of the end of last year, the company’s total assets amounted to UAH 1.45 billion, with a registered capital of UAH 154.92 million.
Meanwhile, in 2025, JSC “Volodymyr-Volynskyi Agrarian Company” increased its net profit by 39.4% compared to the previous year—to 14.39 million UAH. The company’s net revenue grew by 20.6% to UAH 55.74 million. The agricultural company’s assets are valued at UAH 309.89 million, and its authorized capital amounts to UAH 113.61 million.
Both enterprises are part of the Avesterra Group. The main shareholders of the companies are Mykhailo Dobkin, Dmytro Dobkin, Alla Dobkina, and Olena Dobkina, as well as the asset management company “Oreola” (the “Titul” and ‘Oreola’ funds) and “Stichting Administratiekantoor Seifdam.”
