MOSCOW, June 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — PRIME-TASS Business News Agency is changing its name and carrying out a rebranding. The rebranding is governed by the fact that independent non-commercial organization AG Novosti Moskvy, part of the RIA Novosti media holding, has purchased a 65% stake in closed joint-stock company PRIME-TASS Business News Agency. Under decisions made at an extraordinary general meeting of PRIME-TASS’ shareholders in May, the agency will revert to the name PRIME. The agency carried this name from 1993, when it was established, until 1996, when PRIME-TASS agency was created based on PRIME’s assets and reporter network, with ITAR-TASS news agency gaining a 35% stake.

“The 15-year history of PRIME-TASS’ existence has proven the efficiency of a public and private partnership on the economic information market,” said PRIME Director Oleg Ananyev, one of its founders. “With the development of the Russian economy and plans to create an international financial center in Russia, the tasks of providing information support for these processes are becoming more large-scale,” he said.

The rebranding is expected to be fully completed by the end of 2011. The integration of the editorial processes of PRIME and RIA Novosti is expected to be carried out in several stages. The first stage, connected with changing the agency’s name, is almost finished. New documents will be signed on behalf of PRIME once the state registration of changes in the agency’s charter is completed. All agreements earlier concluded by PRIME-TASS, as well as the agency’s former obligations, will continue to operate without restrictions. Moreover, PRIME is keeping all trademarks and domain names that were previously registered at PRIME-TASS.

“PRIME will operate in close contact with international information agency RIA Novosti, but without losing its editorial independence,” said Maxim Filimonov, RIA Novosti’s first deputy editor-in-chief and a member of PRIME’s board of directors. “After the integration of the editorial teams new specialized products for financial and corporate markets are expected to be developed. In particular, there are plans to develop mobile products and develop applications for the integration of both news information and services for financial markets,” he said.

Over the coming months, PRIME will be responsible for producing the majority of the economic information that is to be used in products of both agencies, according to Filimonov. Editorial teams of both agencies, which prepare business information, are expected to be united into a single editorial staff and consolidated based on PRIME. In the future, PRIME and RIA Novosti are expected to be transferred to a single technological platform for news production to unify the editorial process and increase the synergy effect from the two agencies’ joint work. In connection with the information given above, the new name PRIME instead of PRIME-TASS and the new logotype should be used while citing the agency’s news starting from Monday.

As part of this re-naming, PRIME will use new domain names: www.1prime.ru for Russian-language products and www.1prime.biz for English-language ones. The old websites www.prime-tass.ru and www.prime-tass.com will remain active alongside the new sites during this transitional period.

RIA Novosti is a leading Russian media company with a rich 70-year history. At present, the RIA Novosti media holding includes the eponymous multimedia Russian Information Agency, the Russian Agency of Legal and Judicial Information, the R-sport news agency, the Moscow News Publishing House, which publishes newspapers in English and Arabic, a press center, as well as more than 70 Internet resources in 14 languages. RIA Novosti’s websites are visited by 17 million unique users each month.

Independent non-commercial organization Novosti Moskvy, affiliated with RIA Novosti, purchased a controlling stake in PRIME-TASS business news agency in the spring.

PRIME-TASS business news agency was established in June 1996 by Russian state information agency ITAR-TASS and private information-publishing agency PRIME.

The agency produces a wide range of information products: online news, analytical surveys, databases, specialized themed bulletins, and is actively conducting research in the information technologies sector. In particular, the agency has created a number of information-trading systems: software for securities trading, a set of programs to organize trading on the Forex market, and a terminal for trading on the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX).

PRIME-TASS cooperates with the leaders of the foreign information market. In particular, it has developed a number of joint real-time projects on the Forex, stock, and commodity markets with the world’s largest news agency, Dow Jones Newswires.

Moreover, PRIME-TASS has for many years been publishing and distributing official publications of the Central Bank of Russia and has been also serving as the Federal Service for Financial Markets’ mandated agent for disclosing information on the securities market.

SOURCE PRIME