Potanin said he agreed to discuss a merger between Nornickel and UC Rusal (MCX:RUAL), and the authorities revived an initiative to ban currency-linked contracts – these and other important news for Tuesday morning, July 5, in our daily review.

“Norilsk Nickel, the world’s leading producer of palladium and high-grade nickel, has agreed to return to the idea of merging with the world’s largest aluminum producer (outside China) UC Rusal. Vladimir Potanin, Nornickel’s president and largest shareholder, told RBC in an interview.

The authorities have reworked the draft law on the prohibition of setting the contract price with a link to foreign currency. The document, developed by the Ministry of Justice, was submitted to the government commission for legislative activity on Monday, July 4, RBC learned. According to the text of the bill, the ban is planned to be introduced by the end of 2023 and a number of exceptions will be made – for example, for transactions with precious metals and hydrocarbons.

The demand for hardware cryptocurrency wallets in Russia in March-April of this year increased several times. This was reported to Vedomosti by a representative of the wallet developer Tangem and confirmed by representatives of M.video-Eldorado and Ozon (MCX:OZONDR). Hardware cryptocurrency wallets are devices similar to USB drives that generate secret keys and digital signatures of transactions offline, allowing to conduct transactions with cryptocurrency: buy, store or sell tokens.

Japan has introduced new sanctions against Russia and Belarus. The sanctions list in the next round included 90 individuals and entities, the country’s Finance Ministry said in a statement. Among them are Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko, head of the United Aircraft Corporation Yuri Slyusar, cellist Sergei Roldugin and his wife, relatives of Alexei Mordashov and God Nisanov.

Volvo Group intends to lay off some employees in Russia within a year and is now thinking about the scale of the reduction. This was reported to Kommersant by the company’s Russian office, explaining that Volvo has decided to “adapt its operations due to the changed market conditions” in the country.