The stores will be run on a franchise basis by Kuwait's Alshaya Group and will offer the full range of products on sale in the UK. It has yet to decide on a pricing policy, although products are likely to be less expensive than in the UK to reflect Russians' lower average salaries.The Body Shop joins the likes of BHS, Burberry, Monsoon, Rolls-Royce, Mothercare, Kingfisher, Harvey Nichols and Dixons, which have either already entered the Russian market or have announced plans to do so.The Body Shop's first Russian store will at Moscow's Mega Mall 2, a giant shopping centre on the city's edge which houses Ikea and other superstores.The company concedes that ethical consumerism is in its infancy in Russia but is hoping to change that and tap into the enormous potential for the cosmetics market, which is forecast to grow by almost 11 per cent between now and 2010.The Body Shop's global communications director, Bill Eyres, told The Independent: "There's a niche in the Russian market for us."It [ethical consumerism] will differentiate the business. The Body Shop is to become the latest in a long line of British retailers to open a chain of stores in Russia and stake a claim to a share of the country's booming consumer goods market. The ethical cosmetics company will open its first shop in Moscow before the end of the year and plans to open a further seven next year in the capital, St Petersburg and other cities. Boots will keep £400m of the sales proceeds and return the rest to shareholders through a special dividend. The company was anxious to seal a deal quickly as it wants to push ahead with its proposed £7bn tie-up with Alliance UniChem.. The Amicus union said it would oppose any attempt to make compulsory redundancies.Reckitt plans to push Boots products into Reckitt distribution to expand into Asia, Africa and Latin America. Reckitt expects to achieve annual cost savings of £75m from 2008 by reducing overlap, but said it would retain BHI's key production sites in Nottingham, Germany and Bangkok.On his way to Nottingham to discuss the integration of the businesses, Mr Becht said there would be some job cuts at BHI's 3,000-strong workforce but declined to provide more details.

Reckitt won the auction for the Boots over-the-counter medicines business on Thursday after beating five shortlisted bidders, including Novartis, Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline. The deal adds three strong Boots brands - Nurofen painkillers, Strepsils throat lozenges and Clearasil facewash - to Reckitt's 15 power brands. Reckitt said it was paying 20 times earnings against recent similar deals which were priced at 14 times. Bart Becht, the chief executive, stressed: "It's a good deal for shareholders. We've bought a top-notch business with very strong brands - the top three brands are global leaders in their categories." He added: "This was a full price, but there are considerable synergies. With China producing 400,000 graduate scientists and engineers a year, it was essential that developed nations such as Britain invested more in training and innovation to keep one technological step ahead of the Chinese, he said. As this is a high-growth and high-margin business, there will be earnings enhancing from year one."While exceeding City expectations of a £1.6bn to £1.7bn valuation, the deal was received positively by analysts. But even if Western countries "raise their game", it was only a matter of time before China became an equal match..

Reckitt Benckiser defended the higher-than-expected price of £1.926bn it agreed to pay for Boots Healthcare International (BHI) by outlining the cost savings and growth benefits of the deal yesterday. The director-general of the CBI said UK Trade and Industry had been "emasculated by stealth" by the Chancellor who had cut its budget and forced it to concentrate solely on inward investment as part of "a deliberate policy to denude one of the great trading nations of the world". Sir Digby was speaking as the CBI announced the opening of an office in Beijing to add to its overseas posts in Brussels and Washington. The office, in the Beijing British Centre in the heart of the Chinese capital, will provide advice to British companies on trade relations with China and advise Chinese companies planning to invest in the UK.Sir Digby predicted China would catch up with the developed nations of the world within five years and be capable of producing most of the "value added" goods and services supplied by the West today. Sir Digby Jones, the leader of British business, launched a savage attack on Gordon Brown yesterday for undermining the government body which promotes UK exporters. The Nobel committee bestowed the prestigious award for 2005 on Mohamed ElBaradei, the UN official who rose to prominence by exposing the lengths that America would go to in its efforts to build a case for war.. In a dramatic rebuff to President George Bush, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the man who dared to tell the Americans that the main plank of the US argument for waging war on Iraq was based on a lie.