Rossiya (Moscow) - August 25, 2005

The beginning of a new business year will be celebrated in Gostiny Dvor on September 2. This high-society event will bring together many stars from Russian business. The event has been timed to coincide with the anniversary of RBC TV, Russia's first business television channel.

The organizers have intrigued the Moscow business and fashion circles by the scale of celebration. The event is expected to become the highest society event of the season. And this is reasonable as chief executives of the Russian business, company heads, entrepreneurs with a worldwide reputation as well as government officials, ministers and deputies have long become a hallmark both of the business and high society lives. The modern business style obliges one not only to work in an office and watch business television, but also to participate in high-society events. "We did not want to organize another corporate holiday," RBC General Director Yuri Rovensky said. "We want to give a gift to all our friends," he added.

The gala night will bring together a thousand of people in Gostiny Dvor. This is the number of invitations sent to companies, ministries and agencies. Only those have been invited who dictate modern trends of Russian business life. A loud business-styled holiday will turn a new page in Moscow high-society life. The beginning of a new labor season has never been celebrated before in Russia. The 1st of May won't count, as it cannot be considered a high-society event. New times bring new morals, a new attitude towards labor and a new format of holidays: a closed and noble event for the jet set instead of large-scale public demonstrations.

The calendar metamorphosis is clear: nobody will hear about work in spring. Short May holidays turned into a rehearsal of long summer vacations. Early autumn is another matter. People return from vacations and begin to think about not how to spend money but how to earn it; they think about work, new projects; examine competitors and collect necessary information…

Everybody in the West knows when a new financial year begins. In Russia, one will sooner hear of the date of the Chinese New Year. However, Russia is being gradually accustomed to such exotic stuff, primarily by the business community. It is prestigious to be a businessman and it is FASHIONABLE to watch business news. The launch of the Russian business TV channel two years ago was very apropos. Now we have the main attribute of the business lifestyle (in fact, today it is difficult to imagine the office of a prosperous company without a plasma panel with RBC TV fixed on the foreground) and a great reason to celebrate the beginning of a new business year.