Yandex Seeks Putin's Approval For Business Restructuring: Report

Author: Anusuya Lahiri | November 25, 2022 11:32am

Yandex N.V. (NASDAQ:YNDX), often described as “Russia’s Google,” sought Vladimir Putin’s permission to sell its operations in the country, spin off its main international projects and appoint a longtime confidant of the Russian president to manage its relationship with the Kremlin.
Yandex informally enlisted top economic official Alexei Kudrin to win the Russian president’s approval, in principle, for the restructuring plan, Financial Times reports.
The changes would lead to Yandex’s Dutch holding company exiting the Russian market by selling its entire business apart from the international divisions of four critical units.
Yandex aimed to spare itself from the disastrous consequences of Putin’s war in Ukraine, which has prompted several thousand Yandex staffers to flee the country.
Yandex hopes the restructuring plan will save its most promising new international ventures, including self-driving cars, cloud computing, education technology, and data labeling, by ending their ties to the toxic Russian market.
Yandex also hopes Kudrin will secure a future for its far larger Russian business when the Kremlin is vastly increasing the state’s control over the economy and the internet amid a mass exodus of foreign companies.
Kudrin and Putin have worked together since their days in the St Petersburg mayor’s administration.
Like many of Russia’s top economic officials, Kudrin privately opposes the war.
Arkady Volozh, the company’s founder who lives in Israel, is also horrified by the war and has not returned to Russia since it began.
Yandex’s Russian business reportedly needs the new deal to ensure it remains in private hands.
Kudrin and Yandex have discussed the official assuming a small equity stake and taking on an undefined role heading up Yandex’s governance.
Yandex’s Russian management will retain control of the company’s day-to-day operations but delegate the company’s increasingly sensitive relations with the Kremlin to Kudrin.
Several Kremlin-friendly Russian oligarchs have expressed interest in a stake in Yandex.