"Consortium.First" is a closed-end mutual

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Yandex has announced the completion of its restructuring. The new parent company of the IT giant, after acquiring 28.4% of the shares owned by the Dutch Yandex NV, is Yandex MKPAO, which belongs to Consortium.First, which had 67.8% before the purchase. The remaining 3.7%, according to the old shareholder structure, is controlled by Yandex.Technologies LLC.

investment fund. Its senegal whatsapp resource shareholders include Alexander Chachava's Leta Capital (through Infinity Management JSC, established on December 28, 2023) with 25% of the shares, Pavel Prass, CEO of the specialized depository Infinitum, with 15% (through IT Development JSC, established on November 8, 2023), multi-profile investor Alexander Ryazanov with 10% (through Meridian-Service LLC), 15% from PJSC Lukoil (through Argonaut ZPIF), as well as Yandex managers through FMP LLC. Representatives of Yandex did not respond to a ComNews correspondent's request about the distribution of shares after the restructuring.

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Yandex Unmoored from Yandex NV in Baltic Sea for $5.2 Billion
Dutch Yandex NV will sell its business in Russia for 475 billion rubles to a consortium of four private investors and managers of the Russian Yandex. The buyers will pay half the amount outside of Russia in yuan, and the rest will be covered by Yandex NV shares. The new ownership structure is designed so that no party has a controlling stake.

The completion of the deal was also reported by YNV employees in an official release on the company's website. They said that YNV received the agreed deal amount of $5.4 billion (RUB 475 billion at the exchange rate at the time of the deal) in the form of $2.8 billion and 162.5 million YNV Class A shares.

Oleg Abelev, head of the analytical department of JSC IK Rikom-Trust, noted that the final price was strongly influenced by the mandatory 50% discount established at the state level and applied to all investors from “unfriendly countries” wishing to get rid of Russian assets.

According to Freedom Finance Global analyst Vladimir Chernov, the actual amount of the deal could have been two or three times higher. He noted that it cannot be ruled out that after some time foreign investors may again show interest in Russian assets, so many companies that left the Russian market have the opportunity to buy back the enterprises.

"Many foreign shareholders sold their shares to the Russian management of these companies with the aim of buying them back later. However, it is difficult to say how many investors will take advantage of this opportunity. After all, the geopolitical situation remains tense, and the sanctions pressure on the economy of the Russian Federation and its partners is increasing," Vladimir Chernov noted.

Leonid Delitsyn, an analyst at GC Finam, does not rule out the possibility of foreign capital returning to Yandex. However, he doubted that the former owners of the IT giant would be interested in this.

According to Artem Mikhaylin, an analyst at Veles Capital LLC, the absence of a clause on such a possibility in the deal also speaks against the possibility of a buyout by former partners.

"I think," said Leonid Delitsyn, "that Arkady Volozh will focus on developing the business in the field of data labeling and cleaning, that is, the Toloka service, formerly "Toloka". This is a hot and in-demand area. The Scale company, the leader in this area, is valued at $14 billion - almost the same amount as Anthropic, OpenAI's main competitor, which is valued at $16 billion. Data labeling and cleaning is not talked about as much as generative artificial intelligence, but it is valued no less. Nebius Group has ten years of experience in the field of data labeling, tested in one of the world's largest search engines - Yandex, which distinguishes the new company from its competitors."

By July 31, 2024, Yandex NV must change its name and stop using Yandex's corporate symbols and attributes. The company's management announced that YNV will soon change its name to Nebius Group and introduce changes to its management team and board of directors. Two anonymous sources of the Bloomberg news agency claim that Arkady Volozh will return to the company as executive director.