OREANDA-NEWS. December 4, 2012. RBC OJSC (MICEX-RTS: RBCM) hereby announces having launched a regional version of the Rbc.ru business portal in St. Petersburg. This is the first step on the road to RBC's regional expansion.

Until recently, people in St. Petersburg had to use two resources: Rbc.ru to read federal news and Spb.rbc.ru to read the news of their region. Now, by entering Rbc.ru into the browser, St. Petersburg users are automatically redirected to the regional version of the portal, which is a combination of the nationwide website with integrated local news. Local news items are highlighted to facilitate navigation. The quality of the content of the St. Petersburg version of Rbc.ru has benefited from the integration of St. Petersburg-based editor's offices of RBC news agency and RBC daily business newspaper.

The audience of the regional version of the portal is expected to grow 20-25% in 2013. Thus, RBC holding will strengthen its leading positions in the business mass media segment in the country's northwest.

"Regional expansion is a logical and well-timed step in the company's bid for expansion. Due to the availability of Internet in Russia's largest cities and huge interest in local news, the program will help fortify RBC's positions, increase audience, and be instrumental in securing additional regional advertising budgets," RBC CEO Sergey Lavrukhin said.

"We have started with St. Petersburg because we have our own news agency there. We are in talks with leading local online news resources in other regions and have reached agreements in principle in a number of cities. Since the technology is universal, we'll be ready to roll out this program in other regions after testing it in St. Petersburg," RBC Director for Strategy and Development Georgy Mikaberidze pointed out.