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Federal Law No. 351-FZ amends Federal Law No. 381-FZ (the trade-regulation framework law) to create a licensed, foreign-ownership-capped regime for firms that research Russian commodity markets — collecting, processing, and analysing data on market structure, pricing, and participants. The 20% foreign-ownership threshold is low enough to catch most Western market- research multinationals operating in Russia through local subsidiaries, and the law explicitly extends to dual-national Russian citizens, closing an obvious workaround. Domestic processing of the underlying data (no offshore analytics) is also mandated. One of the bill's authors stated publicly that data from foreign analytics firms still operating in Russia (Ipsos, GfK, Nielsen were named) was seen as a likely input to Western sanctions calibration — framing this less as ordinary sectoral protectionism and more as an information-denial measure aimed at the sanctions regime itself.
Severity is set at 2 (mixed basis): the law is narrow in sectoral scope (market-research/data services, not a broad economic sector) but the 20%-ownership trigger and extraterritorial reach (dual nationals) give it real bite for the named multinationals, which is the quantifiable element behind the rating.
ownership in their Russian entities face a binary choice by 1 March 2026: divest/restructure ownership below the threshold, exit the Russian commodity-research business, or continue operating in breach.
out of Russia — a data-sovereignty measure that is a structural cousin of Russia's other post-2022 information-control instruments.
(Ipsos, GfK, Nielsen) after the 1 March 2026 effective date, and for the scope/terms of the mid-2026 exemption mechanism GTA flagged.
GTA's 04 Jul 2026 clarification was not accessible without a GTA login; revisit if a primary-source amendment surfaces.
or divestment triggered by the law since signing.