Cityline (ISP)

Founded in December 1996, Cityline, a specialist provider of Internet technology (ISP), was one of the first major Internet providers in Moscow and across Russia. The founders of this limited company comprise a list of leading Russian businessmen:[1][2] The line-up is completed by a major European investment company. Cityline provided its services to such blue chip names as Mercedes, Vist, Soyuz and Computer Land.[3]

In 1997 Cityline, in association with Mr. Sergey Skatershikov, founded Netskate, the company that owned a dozen of the most popular websites from the early period of Runet, one of which was the leading Russian ‘Web Design’ studio of Artemy Lebedev.[4] Cityline was one of the first companies in Russia to enter into a cooperation agreement with Microsoft as an official Internet-provider for Windows 98 and its Small Business Server packages.[5] By 2001 Cityline had 100 000 subscribers and was bought out for $29 million by the international telecommunications company Golden Telecom that had been founded by the global corporation Global Telesystems.[6]

• Emelyan Zakharov, the renowned Moscow art dealer
• Demyan Kudryavcev, chief executive of the major publishing house Commersant
• Georgy Shuppe, the former president of Cityline.
• Dmitry Bosov; owner of the large investment company Alltech
• Rafael Filinov; currently Chairman of the privately held corporation Djeruialtin.