ABOUT PRIME-TASS

The St. Petersburg-based Northwestern branch of Prime-TASS, Russia's leading business news agency, was established in January 2000. We are one of the leading business news providers in Russia's Northwest. Besides the city of St. Petersburg, reporters and stringers based in St. Petersburg and other key cities of the region cover the Arkhangelsk, Leningrad, Murmansk, Novgorod, and Vologda regions as well as the constituent republics of Karelia and Komi, and the Nenets Autonomous District.

Privately owned, the agency has no political affiliations, and is known for its objective coverage worldwide. With over 150 permanent staff and scores of stringers across Russia, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the world, we provide quality live coverage of major economic and political news in Russia and 14 former Soviet states. We are particularly strong in commodity, energy and financial markets coverage. We also offer excellent coverage of Russian and CIS banking and corporate news. The Russian language service, located at www.prime-tass.ru, puts out over 300 news and analysis pieces daily.

Prime-TASS was created in 1996 with Russia's state news agency ITAR-TASS taking a 35% stake. While the agency distributes exclusive information from the Russian government, the Central Bank and the parliament, our editorial policy is completely independent. You will not find political propaganda and corporate advertising on our news pages. Our opinion pieces and analyses are based on attributed comments by leading analysts. While we do cover major political news, business news is our priority. Among our subscribers are major domestic and foreign investment banks, commodity traders and thousands of Russian and foreign companies. We are one of the most frequently quoted Russian business newswires worldwide. All major international news agencies and business publications are among our subscribers.

Prime-TASS' English language service produces over 100 news and analysis pieces daily. News is produced by a staff of Western-educated Russian reporters and rewriters with years of experience in Western news organizations. Our stories are professionally edited by native English speakers. The Prime-TASS English-language service does not translate, but rewrites and adapts Russian stories for our clients and produces dozens of original stories and analysis daily. The Russian and English language wires are synchronized so that news in Russian and English appear at virtually the same time. Many English-language stories and analysis pieces never appear on the Russian wire. You can visit the English-language news site at www.prime-tass.com

To subscribe to the Northwestern newswire in Russian please contact us at primespb@itartass.spb.ru

To find out more about our other products and services in Russian, please visit our Products Page at www.prime-tass.spb.ru/products.pl