The Government Commission for Control of Foreign Investments in Russia approved the acquisition by a Russian group of investors of 96.3% of the shares of the Yandex company from the Dutch Yandex NV. The remaining 3.7% of the securities already belonged to the Russian Yandex.
Yandex NV announced that it had agreed to sell its Russian business in early February. According to the terms of the deal, the new owner of Yandex will be the international company Yandex Joint Stock Company, which will receive 99.999% of the share of Yandex LLC. The remaining 0.001% will be received by the Public Interest Fund. MCAO was registered in December 2023 on Oktyabrsky Island in the Kaliningrad Region.
After the transaction, the main owner of MCAO will be the closed mutual fund Consortium.First, headed by Yandex managers. According to information from Yandex NV materials, Yandex top management will receive a 35 percent stake in the closed mutual fund through the FMP company and will become the largest shareholder. The rest of the closed-end mutual fund will be distributed between four structures: 25% – Infinity Management (founder of Leta Capital Alexander Chachava), 15% – Argonavt (Lukoil company), 15% – IT.Razvitie (Pavel Prass) and 10% – “Meridian Service” (Alexander Ryazanov).
After the stage of agreeing on terms with shareholders, the deal had to be approved by the government commission on foreign investments, the President of Russia, the Federal Antimonopoly Service and the Central Bank. The stage of obtaining permission from the government commission has now been completed. Receiving the approval of the commission indicates the completion of the final stage of the Yandex reorganization process, however, completing all procedures will take time.
The transaction amount approved by the commission will be 457.3 billion rubles, which is 17.7 billion rubles less than what was announced in early February (475 billion rubles). It is believed that the decrease in the value of the transaction occurred because 3.7% of the company may belong to the top management, who remained in the Russian Yandex and became one of the new co-owners of the closed mutual fund Consortium.First.
The initial valuation of the transaction at 475 billion rubles was made taking into account the 50% discount applied when foreign companies leave the Russian market. As noted in the English version of the press release of the Dutch holding, the total market capitalization of Yandex NV amounted to approximately $10.2 billion (918 billion rubles) based on the weighted average selling price of one class A share on the Moscow Exchange for the three-month period ending January 31, 2024.
According to unofficial information, it is expected that up to 237 billion rubles will be paid in cash, and the rest of the amount may be paid in Yandex NV shares. It was originally planned that 230 billion rubles would be paid in yuan, and the rest of the amount would be covered by the sale of 176 million shares Dutch Yandex NV
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