Today in Russian Business – April 29, 2010

Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies will buy the ICQ online messenger from AOL for $187.5 million.  This pilot assembly line should alleviate some of the negative PR stemming from the recent corruption probe into Hewlett-Packard’s Moscow offices.  Russia wants the U.S. Department of Justice’s help with investigations into bribery allegations against Daimler.  Dunkin’ Donuts unveils its plans to conquer Russia, and invokes the donut-related lines of poet Vladimir Mayakovsky as proof that the country is donut-savvy: ‘Jam flowed down his lip/ Like raindrops down a drainpipe.‘  Mayor Yury Luzhkov isn’t too pleased that the newly renovated Stalin-era high-rise hotel is to keep its new name ‘The Hotel Ukraina‘.  Arkady Rotenberg, whose company supplies pipes to Gazprom, says that he would consider it ‘unacceptable‘ to use his 40-year friendship with Vladimir Putin to get ahead in business.  Polymetal’s profits have recovered this year, and Arbidol-maker Pharmstandard is celebrating huge rises on its 2009 figures.