Interfax

As the first non-governmental channel of political and economic information about the USSR, Interfax was formed in September 1989, during Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost period, by Mikhail Komissar and his colleagues from international broadcasting station 'Radio Moscow', a part of Soviet Gosteleradio system. Interfax originally used fax machines for text transmission, hence the company name.

By 1990, Interfax had 100 subscribers and the agency quickly began to attract the attention of conservatives within the government, who attempted to shut down the agency. This saw the agency gain prominence in major western media, a position strengthened by its coverage of the 1991 August Putsch and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Interfax continued to expand in the 1990s, adding subsidiary agencies for financial, metallurgical, oil and gas markets, information products on agriculture, business law, transport, telecommunications, and the market data terminal 'EFiR information system' for stock market players to its general news coverage. Interfax also opened subsidiaries across the post-Soviet states, first in Ukraine (1992), Belarus (1993) and Kazakhstan (1996), and later in Azerbaijan (2002), during this time bringing the number of local offices across the regions of Russian Federation to 50.

To promote its information products abroad, Interfax opened its first company outside the former USSR in 1991, when 'Interfax America' was opened in Denver, CO. This was followed by the opening of London-based 'Interfax Europe Ltd.' (1992), 'Interfax Germany GmbH', based in Frankfurt (1993), and the 'Interfax News Service Ltd.' in Hong Kong (1998).

In 2004, Interfax created the 'SPARK system' designed to check business agents in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, Interfax also launched media monitoring services through its 'SCAN system'. In 2011, the company added London-based project, 'Interfax Global Energy', which reports on the energy markets worldwide.