OAO Detsky Mir’s shareholders meeting on November 27, 2003, approved an issue of bonds to raise up to 10 billion rubles over 10 years beginning in 2004. Details of the bond issue are to be finalized by the company’s Board of Directors. The company plans to use the funds it expects to raise to renovate the building of the Central Detsky Mir Department Store in Lubyanka Square and build a network of shopping and recreation centers in the Detsky Mir format in Moscow. Detsky Mir is the biggest player in the children’s goods market in Russia today. The group’s biggest properties include the Lubyanka department store, which is Europe’s largest children’s goods retailer (total area of 54,500 square meters); Dom Igrushki (Toy House) in Bolshaya Yakimanka Street; a pioneering Detsky Mir shopping super-center in the MEGA complex; a new store in the Golyanovo district, Moscow, and regional shopping centers in Orel and Tambov. Next in the company’s pipeline are new-format Detsky Mir stores in Maryino and Bibirevo in Moscow and the first Detsky Mir store in Sennaya Square in St. Petersburg. In the medium term, the company plans to open 65 Detsky Mir stores, 20 of them in Moscow, by 2007. Sistema JSFC has been Detsky Mir’s majority shareholder since 1996, with the Moscow City Government holding 19 per cent of shares in OAO Detsky Mir.