Breaking freer

24 June 2020 By Dasha Afanasieva Follow @dasha_reuters

The Russian search engine will pay $600 mln for the bank’s stake in their e-commerce tie-up and exit their payments unit. With shares up, funding this with $800 mln from investors like Roman Abramovich makes sense. Sadly, immunity from Kremlin meddling isn’t part of the deal.

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Russian internet group Yandex is planning a public offering of $200 million newly issued class A shares and a private placement of $600 million, the $16 billion Nasdaq-listed company said on June 23.

Investors in the proposed private placement include the investment arm of state-owned bank VTB, an investment vehicle controlled by Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich and a company belonging to Alexander Abramov and Alexander Frolov, who are co-owners of steel company Evraz along with Abramovich.

The $800 million of proceeds will be used to maintain financial flexibility and fund future growth across sectors such as e-commerce.

Yandex also said it would terminate its partnership in two projects with Sberbank, Russia’s biggest lender. Yandex will buy 45% of marketplace Yandex.Market from Sberbank for 42 billion roubles ($610 million) and sell 25%+1 rouble in e-payment service Yandex.Money to Sberbank for 2.4 billion roubles.

Shares of Yandex hit an all-time high of just below $50 before closing up 4% at $49 on June 23 in New York.

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