Dutch-owned Yandex sells Russian assets in $5.4bn deal

The now much-diminished headquartered in the Netherlands will rebrand to Nebius Group.

The Dutch parent company of Yandex, a popular search engine that is the equivalent of Google in Russia, has officially closed a $5.4bn deal to sell all the group’s businesses in Russia and split the company today (15 July).

In a statement, Yandex NV said it has sold its minority stake of 28pc in Russia and certain other countries and that the retained businesses will be called Nebius Group subject to shareholder approval, severing all ties with the country since it invaded Ukraine more than two years ago.

“Today’s announcement marks the end of a long and complicated chapter in the life of our company. All connections with Russia have now been severed,” said John Boynton, chair of Yandex NV.

“I would like to thank all of our 1,300 current employees, as well as our clients, partners and other stakeholders for their support and patience over the past two years. From today, with the divestment now complete, we are free to build again.”

Last week, the parent company completed delisting its Class A shares from the Moscow Exchange and said that its shares are now listed only on Nasdaq. “Trading in these shares is still halted, and we will update the market on this in due course,” a statement reads.

Boynton said that completing a cross-border divestment of this “scale and complexity” would be “challenging enough in normal times – and these are not normal times”.

“That we were successful in pulling it off is a great testament to the unwavering efforts of the deal team led by Vadim Marchuk, which included the complete redesign of the group’s operations to allow for the creation of a new company, now totally separated from Russia,” he said.

“Vadim will be stepping down this fall, and on behalf of the Board I want to express my appreciation to him for the tremendous value that he brought to the company since the day he joined and in particular for his leadership over the past two extremely challenging years.”

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