<font color=red><b>Interfax turns 25</b></font></font>

Twenty-five yeas ago, in September 1989, subscribers received the first news issues from Interfax.

We are thankful to those, who, for a quarter of a century have been with us, read our news, helped to carry out new projects and move forward. Your support gives us confidence and belief in ourselves.

Interfax emerged in the times of perestroika and glasnost. We have been developing together with democracy in our life and Russia‘s new market economy. We mastered new technologies. We expanded our reach.

Changing, we strived to remain the same, follow basic principles of independent journalism, remain unbiased and provide information that would let us make the right decisions in both politics and economics. So, we are sure, it will be like this in the future.

A group of journalists created Interfax as the first independent news agency in the Soviet Union that works according to international standards of information journalism.

Only the state had means of delivering operative information in late 1980-s and Interfax started to use telefaxes that were an innovation then. It was they who gave the name to the agency.

In January 1991, authorities made an attempt to shut down Interfax but thanks to the support of Boris Yeltsin the agency managed to resume its operations almost immediately.

Interfax received popularity in Western countries for covering the 1991 coup attempt, the so-called August Putsch, and many other events that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The agency‘s information let Russia and the world learn about the most important events in the post-Soviet space.

Interfax has remained today the most quoted Russian news agency in foreign countries. This proves Interfax‘s authority and trust in its information.

In the 1990-s Interfax turned into an information group. Specialized agencies for financial, oil, gas and metallurgical markets, information products on agriculture, business law, transport, telecommunications, and the EFIR information system for stock market players were created. Interfax launched a rating agency in partnership with the world‘s leading agency, Moody‘s. All this allowed Interfax to win a leading position on the Russian market of financial information.

News agencies under the Interfax brand opened in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan in later 1990-s and in Azerbaijan in early 2000-s. All of them are leading news agencies in their countries.

In 2004, Interfax launched the SPARK system designed to check business agents and analyze corporate information. Today, SPARK is an absolute leader in this growing segment of the information market.

International investors coming to the Russian market study information on potential partners thanks to data provided by the Interfax-D&B company created together with Dun& Bradstreet, the world‘s leading corporation for company analysis.

Interfax founded the United Credit Bureau together with Experian and Sberbank, which now is a top-3 Russian credit bureau.

Another large Interfax project is the SCAN system of media monitoring that analyzes 20,000 of most important sources of information.

Under the Interfax Global Energy brand the Interfax group provides information services on the global gas market. The service‘s editorial team is based in London and its correspondents work all over the world. Global gas companies, traders, analysts, and state agencies are subscribed to its products.

Today the main area of evolution is the development of services and IT solutions that help companies manage risks and process large data sets. Our new products include SPARK-Marketing, X-Compliance and SPARK-Transfer Pricing.

We are sure that our 25-year experience, adherence to rigid standards of information work, and the use of modern information technologies will allow us to remain necessary to our clients.

(Our editorial staff can be reached at eng.editors@interfax.ru)