★Taper Coffee Table by Global Views™ If you are looking for Taper Coffee Table by Global Views Yes you see this. Online looking has now gone an extended way; it has changed the way shoppers and entrepreneurs do business nowadays. GLOBAL VIEWS 2010 TOPLINE DATA FROM U.S. PUBLIC SURVEY 1 Introduction Knowledge Networks, a polling, social science, and market research firm in Menlo Park, California conducted this study of American public opinion and foreign policy attitudes for The Chicago Council on Global Affairs in June 2010.
Privately held | |
Founded | 1980 |
---|---|
Founders | Alf Näslund |
Headquarters | , |
Area served | worldwide |
Christian Lucas (Chairman), Jacques Stern (CEO) | |
Products | VAT/GST refunds, dynamic currency conversion, POS and retail technologies, customer intelligence, marketing services and publications, training and education, consultancy |
Number of employees | +1,700 |
Global Blue is a tourism shopping tax refund company headquartered in Nyon, Switzerland. The company is best known for tax-free shopping,[1] a VAT/GST refund product and also operates in dynamic currency conversion, marketing services, point-of-sale technology, retail staff education, and customer intelligence. It is the industry leader for providing tax refunds, with Premier Tax Free as its closest competitor.
As of 2014, some 130 countries levy VAT/GST,[2] about 50 offer to refund VAT/GST to tourists for private exports.
History[edit]
Started in Sweden in 1980, tax-free shopping is about refunding the VAT/GST levied in normal stores on the high street to non-resident visitors who will privately export the goods purchased, according to the legislation in the European Union[3] and other countries; tax-free shopping is not to be confused with duty-free, which started in Ireland in 1947 and relates to specific stores (most often located in travel-related environments such as airports) that are exempt from the payment of certain local or national taxes and duties.
Founded as Sweden Tax Free Shopping, the company later became Europe Tax Free Shopping and then Global Refund in 1998. The company was bought out by its management in partnership with Apax Partners, which took a majority stake, and FEXCO for £118 million in 1999.[4] Global Refund moved headquarters from Kungsbacka, near Gothenburg in Sweden, to Nyon, in the Lake Geneva area, in 2001 for a more central position in Europe to manage its business then gone global but with a strong merchant customer base in European tourist destination countries.
In 2007, Apax sold the company to Equistone Partners Europe (at the time Barclays Private Equity), which valued the company at €360 million.[5][6] Previously operating the two brands Tax Free Shopping and First Currency Choice, Global Refund completed its repositioning, product diversification and rebranding as Global Blue in 2010.[7]
Equistone Partners sold the business in May 2012, for 1 billion euros to the technology private equity firm Silver Lake, with Swiss private equity house Partners Group taking a minority stake.[8][9] On 10 April 2014 Global Blue announced the appointment of David Baxby as Chief Executive Officer and a member of the board of directors, taking over from Per Setterberg, who had run the company for 25 years.[10] Following David Baxby a new CEO, Jaques Stern, has been announced on 18 May 2015.[11]
In 2010 Global Blue and the Economist Intelligence Unit started to use the expression 'globe shopper' to identify the market segment of 'people who consider shopping as a fundamental part of their travel experience'.[12] Global Blue Intelligence's globe shopping data and publications are referenced by international and national media including the Financial Times,[13]The Wall Street Journal,[14]City A.M.,[15] the Moodie Report,[16] China Confidential[17] and The Hurun Wealth Report.[18]
In 2010 the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore commissioned Global Blue to develop and operate Singapore’s Electronic Tourist Refund Scheme.[19] In 2011 the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service selected Global Blue as the payment supplier for tax-free shopping in Australia.[20] In July 2013 Global Blue announced a joint venture with NTT DATA to offer tax-free shopping services in Japan.[21] Global Blue is also a certified supplier of the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) Quality Service Certification programme.[22]
Operations[edit]
Global Blue employs around 1,800 people in 51 countries, and provides services to approximately 300,000 merchants (retailers, hotels, restaurants, etc.), and banks in these locations.[23]
References[edit]
- ^'Silver Lake in €1bn Global Blue deal'. Financial Times. May 24, 2012.
- ^'Tax rates'. Archived from the original on August 25, 2013.Cite uses deprecated parameter
|deadurl=
(help) - ^'Travellers leaving the EU VAT export refund scheme'. European Commission. Archived from the original on June 11, 2014. Retrieved June 9, 2014.Cite uses deprecated parameter
|deadurl=
(help) - ^'Fexco and Apax join forces in takeover of Global Refund'. The Irish Times. August 25, 1999.
- ^'Barclays backs Global Refund MBO'. Growth Business UK. October 12, 2007.
- ^'Apax Partners sells Global Refund to Barclays Private Equity'. August 7, 2007.
- ^'Transform Awards 2012 Announce Winners'. Real Wire. March 27, 2012.
- ^'Silver Lake to Buy Equistone's Global Blue for $1.3 Billion'. Bloomberg. May 25, 2012.
- ^Waters, Richard (2012-05-24). 'Silver Lake in €1bn Global Blue deal'. FT.com. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
- ^'Global Blue, Leading Provider of Traveler Commerce Technology Solutions, Names David Baxby as CEO'. April 10, 2014.
- ^'Global Blue Announces Jacques Stern as Chief Executive Officer'. May 18, 2015.
- ^HKTOct 26, 2012 (2012-10-26). 'Hong Kong Tops Asia's Shopping Destinations - Scene Asia - WSJ'. Blogs.wsj.com. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
- ^'Simplify visas for Chinese, urge UK retailers'. Financial Times. 30 January 2011.
- ^Masidlover, Nadya (2013-07-24). 'Chinese Shopping-Tour Buses Go Out of Fashion in Paris - WSJ'. Online.wsj.com. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
- ^'Chinese luxury spenders keep UK tills ringing'. City A.M. April 30, 2012.
- ^'Chinese dominate tourism spending in 2012, reports Global Blue'. TheMoodieReport.com. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
- ^'Chinese shoppers go on overseas spending spree'. China Confidential. 18 November 2010.
- ^The Hurun Report
- ^'Tourists can look forward to hassle-free GST refunds'. SG Press Centre. December 1, 2010.
- ^'Global Blue named exclusive payment supplier for tax free shopping'. Global Blue. March 21, 2011.
- ^Global Blue July 10, 2013 4:30 AM (2013-07-10). 'Global Blue and NTT DATA form Joint Venture to Offer Tax Refund Services in Japan - Yahoo Finance'. Finance.yahoo.com. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
- ^http://www.qualitytourism.cn/ China Outbound Tourism Quality Service Certification
- ^'Global Blue releases the Globe Shopper Report: China Edition | Business - Global Blue'. corporate.globalblue.com. Retrieved 2016-10-26.
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_Blue&oldid=917634998'
Type of business | OOO, Limited liability company |
---|---|
Web portal | |
Available in | Russian |
Traded as | LSE: MAIL |
Founded | 1998 |
Headquarters | Moscow, Russia |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Dmitry Grishin, Yuri Milner |
Industry | Internet information providers |
Products | Internet services (electronic mail, search engine, website catalogue, file hosting service, instant messaging, blogging, information, answers service) |
Services | Email & portal, Social networks, Instant messaging, Online games, Search & e-commerce |
Revenue | RUB 42.741 billion (2016)[1] |
Operating income | RUB 17.914 billion (2016)[1] |
Net income | RUB 11.616 billion (2016)[1] |
Employees | 4,458 (2017) |
Subsidiaries | VK My.com ICQ OK.ru |
Website | mail.ru |
Alexa rank | 30 (June 2019)[2] |
Advertising | Yes |
Launched | 15 October 1998[3] |
Current status | Active |
Mail.ru headquarters in Moscow
Mail.Ru Group, ООО (commonly referred to as Mail.Ru) is a Russian internet company. It was started in 1998 as an e-mail service and went on to become a major corporate figure in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. As of 2013 according to comScore, websites owned by Mail.ru collectively had the largest audience in Russia and captured the most screen time.[4]
Mail.Ru's sites reach approximately 86% of Russian Internet users on a monthly basis and the company is in the top 5 of largest Internet companies, based on the number of total pages viewed. Mail.Ru controls and operates the 3 largest and most popular Russian social networking sites, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, and Moi Mir, respectively.[5][6]
Mail.ru holds 100% of shares of Russia's most popular social network VKontakte[7] and minority stakes in Qiwi, formerly OE Investments (15.04%). It also operates two instant messaging networks (Mail.Ru Agent and ICQ), an e-mail service and Internet portal Mail.ru, as well as a number of online games.
History[edit]
The business was originally owned by Port.ru, a company founded in 1998 by Eugene Goland, Michael Zaitsev and Alexey Krivenkov as spin-off from DataArt. It received an initial investment of USD 1 million from the well-known investor (and fencing champion) James Melcher.
The Mail.ru business expanded rapidly to reach the No. 1 market position in Russia by 2000. Attempts to fund the company's expansion in 2000–2001 were thwarted by the collapse of the technology bubble and Mail.ru had to seek merger partners.
In 2001, Yuri Milner, at the time managing NetBridge (the owner of several internet brands), persuaded the entrepreneur Igor Linshits to back a merger of the Mail.ru business with NetBridge. Igor Linshits subsequently took an active role in the development of the Mail.ru business. In connection with the merger, Milner became Mail.ru CEO.
The company began to operate under its present name on 16 October 2001. Before that time its brand name was owned by Port.ru. It is headed by Dmitry Grishin. As of 2009, its global Alexa rating is 29.[8]
In 2003 Milner resigned from Mail.ru and subsequently set up another internet venture, Digital Sky Technologies (DST).[9] In 2006 Igor Linshits sold his stake in Mail.ru to Tiger Fund and Milner's DST for more than $100 million. In September 2010, DST changed its name to Mail.ru Group.[10] Dmitry Grishin became one of the Mail.ru Group co-founders.[11]
In October 2010, Mail.ru announced plans for an IPO via the London stock-market listing of a subsidiary – also called Mail.ru – worth more than $5bn.[12] The IPO will offer a stake of about 17% of the subsidiary. The subsidiary will include about a quarter of the group's shareholding in Facebook, stakes in Russia's two biggest social networking sites and Mail.ru. The company hired Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and VTB Capital to run the listing.
In March 2012, Yuri Milner stepped down from the role of Chairman of Mail.ru and from the board of directors.[13] Dmitry Grishin was elected to the Board of Directors and appointed as Chairman of the Board while retaining his CEO position. There were no other changes to management or to the Board.[14]
In November 2012, it was reported that Mail.Ru would discontinue using Google search services.[15] Full migration to the use of Mail.Ru's own engine occurred in the summer of 2013.[16]
In late 2012, Mail.ru Group's plans for buying two-letter domain My.com became known. This was interpreted as an intention of dominating world markets and of the upcoming re-branding of services under this name.[17] At the end of 2012, Mail.ru Group bought the Ukrainian email service mail.ua and the registration of email addresses using this domain started on 23 April 2013.[18]
In September 2018, Alibaba announced buying a 10% stake in Mail.Ru, which would have a value of $484 million based on Mail.Ru's market capitalization on 9/10/18.[19][20]
Statistics[edit]
- According to Alexa data for June 2007, Mail.ru was the most popular Russian site on the web.[21]
- In 2005 there were more than 30 million users with 25 million emails a day.
- By the end of 2006 it was announced that a strategic agreement with Yandex was achieved about the use of a Yandexsearch engine instead of Google. This has been reversed in January 2010.[22] This collaboration was dropped in November 2012,[15] with migration to own engine, which ended in mid-2013.[16]
- In January 2007 30% shares of Mail.ru were bought by South African company Naspers for $165 million.[23]
Services[edit]
Mail.Ru Group offers a variety of online communication products and entertainment services for Russian speakers all over the world
- Email & portal – email, main page, content projects
- Social networks – VK, OK.ru, My World
- Instant messaging – Agent, ICQ
- Online Games – MMO games, Social games, Mobile games
- Search & e-commerce – Search, Headhunter, Price comparison
- My.com – integrated communication and entertainment platform.
- Cloud – cloud storage similar to Dropbox, apps available for PC and smartphones[24]
- DST Global – private equity and venture capital investments.[25]
Controversies[edit]
On 15 May 2017, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree to impose a ban on Mail.ru and its widely used social networks including VKontakte and Odnoklassniki as part of its continued sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Crimea and involvement in the War in Donbass.[26][27] The move was widely criticised as censorship, and Reporters Without Borders condemned the ban, calling it a 'disproportionate measure that seriously undermines the Ukrainian people's right to information and freedom of expression.'[28][29] Mail.ru itself estimated (in August 2017) that the ban had cost them around 1.5% of total revenues in 2017.[30]
In 5 November 2017, the Paradise Papers, a set of confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investment, revealed that Russian state organizations with ties to Vladimir Putin pursued between 2009 and 2011 large investments in Facebook and Twitter via an intermediary—Russian-American billionaire and entrepreneur Yuri Milner, founder of Mail.Ru and DST Global, who befriended Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg[31] and was a business associate of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law.[32]
A Kremlin-owned firm, VTB Bank, put $191 million into DST Global, which used it to buy a large share of Twitter in 2011. A subsidiary of the Kremlin-controlled Gazprom funded an investment company that partnered with DST Global to buy shares in Facebook, reaping millions when the social media giant went public in 2012. Twitter similarly went public in 2013. The US government sanctioned VTB in 2014 because of the Russian military intervention in Crimea, but DST Global had sold its stake in Twitter by then. Four days after the Facebook IPO, a DST Global subsidiary sold more than 27 million shares of Facebook for roughly $1 billion.[33]
References[edit]
- ^ abc'Mail.ru Group Financial Statements 2016'(PDF). Mail.ru. Retrieved 26 August 2017.
- ^'Mail.ru Site Info'. Alexa Internet. Retrieved 28 June 2019.
- ^'Mail.Ru празднует 10-летие' (in Russian). Archived from the original on 22 October 2008.
- ^comScore. Which Sites Capture The Most Screen Time in Russia?
- ^comScore. Russians Spend over 6 hours a Month on Odnoklassniki
- ^Mail.ru Takes Over ‘Russia’s Facebook’ Vkontake In $1.47B Deal
- ^'Russia's Mail.Ru buys remaining stake in VKontakte for $1.5 bln'. Reuters. Retrieved 27 November 2014.
- ^'Global Top Sites'. Alexa.com. 30 June 2009. Archived from the original on 2 March 2009. Retrieved 21 December 2011.
- ^Digital Sky Technologies ('DST') Changes Name to Mail.ru GroupArchived 20 October 2010 at the Wayback Machine
- ^Weaver, Courtney (26 October 2010). 'Testing Russian charm in the City'. Financial Times. Retrieved 21 December 2011.
- ^'Mail.ru group corporate governance'. mail.ru group. 18 March 2012. Archived from the original on 28 March 2012. Retrieved 18 March 2012.
- ^Weaver, Courtney (8 October 2010). 'Investors offered a slice of Facebook'. Financial Times. Retrieved 21 December 2011.
- ^'Yuri Milner Is Freed From Mail.ru Board To Take Care of Business'. TechCrunch. 14 March 2012. Retrieved 18 March 2012.
- ^'Mail.ru group limited: Appointment of new Chairman'. mail.ru group. 14 March 2012. Archived from the original on 16 March 2012. Retrieved 18 March 2012.
- ^ abMail.Ru откажется от поисковых услуг Google // Vesti.ru (in Russian)
- ^ abJennifer Slegg: Russia's Mail.Ru Drops Google Search, Launches Own Search Engine // searchenginewatch.com, 3 July 2013
- ^Mail.ru пойдет за рубеж с новым именем // dp.ru, 30 October 2012 (in Russian)
- ^'Mail.Ru открыла регистрацию почтовых адресов в домене @mail.ua – AIN.UA' (in Russian). Archived from the original on 27 April 2013. Retrieved 2 May 2013.
- ^'Terms of Service Violation'. Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
- ^Kurmanaev, Anatoly; Woo, Stu (11 September 2018). 'Alibaba Teams Up With Russian Tech Giant'. The Wall Street Journal. ISSN0099-9660. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
- ^'www.alexa.com'. alexa.com. 30 June 2009. Retrieved 21 December 2011.
- ^'Confirmed: Google To Power Search, Ads On Mail.ru Starting January 2010'. TechCrunch. 15 December 2009. Retrieved 21 December 2011.
- ^'African Naspers buys 30% stake in one of Russia's biggest internet portals'. C-News. 24 January 2007. Archived from the original on 26 December 2007. Retrieved 5 June 2007.
- ^cloud.mail.ru
- ^'Company Overview of DST Global'. Bloomberg L.P.
- ^Poroshenko, Petro (15 May 2017). УКАЗ ПРЕЗИДЕНТА УКРАЇНИ №133/2017: Про рішення Ради національної безпеки і оборони України від 28 квітня 2017 року 'Про застосування персональних спеціальних економічних та інших обмежувальних заходів (санкцій)' [DECREE OF THE PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE №133 / 2017: On the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine dated 28 April 2017 'On the application of personal special economic and other restrictive measures (sanctions)'] (in Ukrainian). President of Ukraine. Retrieved 13 March 2018.
- ^Додаток 2 до рішення Ради національної безпеки і оборони України від '28' квітня 2017 року 'Про застосування персональних спеціальних економічних та інших обмежувальних заходів (санкцій)' ЮРИДИЧНІ ОСОБИ, до яких застосовуються обмежувальні заходи (санкції) [Annex 2 to the Decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine dated 28 April 2017 'On the Application of Personal special economic and other restrictive measures (sanctions) 'Legal Entities under Restrictive Measures (Sanctions)'] (PDF) (in Ukrainian). President of Ukraine. 28 April 2017. p. 185-6 (#422 mail.ru Group), 186-7 (#423 ТОВ 'Вконтакте' (VKontakte)), 187-8 (#424 ТОВ 'В Контакті' (In Kontakte)) & 189 (#425 mail.ru Ukraine). This is a prohibition of Internet Service Providers (ISP) to provide access to the internet service 'Mail.ru' (www.mail.ru) and social-oriented resources 'Vkontakte' (www.vk.com) and 'Odnoklassniki' (www. ok). Retrieved 13 March 2018.
- ^https://rsf.org/en/news/rsf-urges-ukraine-scrap-ban-russian-social-media-sites%7C[permanent dead link] RSF | 23 May 2017
- ^Ukraine's Poroshenko to block Russian social networks, BBC News (16 May 2017)
- ^Russia's Mail.ru raises sales forecasts, shrugs off Ukraine ban – media, Ukrainian Independent Information Agency (12 August 2017)
- ^'Kremlin-owned Firms Linked to Major Investments in Twitter and Facebook'. International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – ICIJ. 5 November 2017.
- ^Swaine, Jon; Harding, Luke (5 November 2017). 'Russia funded Facebook and Twitter investments through Kushner associate'. The Guardian. Retrieved 5 November 2017.
- ^Spencer Woodman (5 November 2017). 'Kremlin-Owned Firms Linked To Major Investments in Twitter And Facebook: The Russian government quietly held a financial interest in U.S. social media'. ICIJ. Retrieved 6 November 2017.
External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mail.ru. |
- Mail.ru Portal(in Russian)
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mail.Ru&oldid=917185217'