About PRIME
PRIME is Russia's leading business news agency known for its objective coverage worldwide. With about 250 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 other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent 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 puts out over 400 news and analysis pieces daily.
While the agency distributes exclusive information from the Russian government, the Central Bank and the parliament, our editorial policy is completely independent. Our opinion pieces and analyses are based on attributed comments by leading analysts. While we do cover major political news, economic and market news is our priority. Among our subscribers are foreign embassies and trade missions, 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. In June 2003, PRIME announced a content exchange and sales partnership with Dow Jones Newswires, the world's leading provider of real-time business and financial news. Under the terms of the agreement, the partners distribute, market and sell the other's products in their respective markets. In February 2004 PRIME together with Dow Jones Newswires launched DJ Forex, the first Russian-language news service to focus on the foreign exchange markets. The service is targeted at Russians actively trading in currencies, including foreign exchange traders, customers of bank foreign exchange trading portals and corporate treasury departments.
PRIME's English language service publishes around 100 news and analysis pieces daily. News is produced by Western-educated Russian translators, reporters and editors with years of experience in Western news organizations. Native speakers professionally edit the stories. The PRIME English-language service does not translate but rewrites and adapts Russian stories for our clients and produces dozens of original stories and analytical pieces daily. The Russian-language and English-language wires are synchronized so that major news in Russian and English appear at almost the same time. Many English-language stories and features never appear on the Russian wire. Besides the live newswire the English-language service also publishes the News Daily newsletter providing readers with full-fledged information about the major political and business events of the day in Russia and the CIS and the Russian Connection weekly bulletin covering telecom sector in the region.
The agency’s history
The private information-publishing agency PRIME was founded in 1993.
In June 1996, Russian state information agency ITAR-TASS and private information-publishing agency PRIME established the PRIME-TASS business news agency.
In May 2011, following a decision made at an extraordinary general meeting of PRIME-TASS’ shareholders, the agency reverted back to the name PRIME. This was the agency’s original name from the time it was founded in 1993 until 1996.
Since June 11, the agency has been operating under the name PRIME instead of PRIME-TASS, this has also been accompanied by a new logo. The rebranding resulted from independent non-commercial organization AG Novosti Moskvy, part of the RIA Novosti media holding, purchasing a 65% stake in PRIME-TASS, while state information agency ITAR-TASS retained a 35% stake.
