Russian printing assets of Norway's Amedia put under state management

MOSCOW. Sept 18 (Interfax) - The Russian assets of Norwegian group Amedia, a major player on Russia's printing products market, have been placed under the management of the Federal Property Management Agency.

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday adding Amedia Eastern Europe AS's shares and stakes in Prime Print Moscow, Prime Print Yekaterinburg, Prime Print Novosibirsk, Prime Print Chelyabinsk and Prime Print Voronezh to the list of assets placed under the temporary management of the Property Agency.

Amedia, formerly A-Pressen, entered the Russian printing market in 1998. The group's five Russian divisions closed 2022 with combined revenue of about 1.64 billion rubles to Russian Accounting Standards. The largest is Prime Print Moscow, a printing house in Dolgoprudny that was called Prof-Media Print prior to 2008 and was renamed after A-Pressen bought out the stake of its local partner, Prof-Media Group.

Amedia said in April 2022 that it could no longer do business in Russia due to the Ukrainian conflict and that it would transfer management of its printing shops in the country to Nobel Prize winning Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, who was placed on the Russian Justice Ministry's list of "foreign agents" on September 1, 2023.

The presidential decree to place equity stakes held by nonresidents from "unfriendly" countries under the temporary management of the Federal Property Agency was issued in late April and initially applied to power companies Fortum and Unipro. Danone Russia and brewer Baltika were added to the list in mid-July.