Page 11 - bne_Tech_09_2019

Leaders
September 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 11
The competition between MRG and Yandex is tightening. As reported by bne IntelliNews, most recently Yandex.Taxi snapped a valuable asset, Vezet taxi operator, from MRG.
Sberbank siding with MRG in the promising transportation and delivery segments is also another sign that no further integration between the bank and Yandex should be expected beyond their joint project Yandex.Market.
"[The joint venture with MRG] is like Sberbank announcing a war with Yandex," unnamed top manager from the digital sector told The Bell
on July 25, as taxi and food delivery are the two fastest growing segments for Yandex. The Bell also claims that Sberbank and Yandex are considering breaking up the Yandex.Market joint venture.
After setting up Yandex.Market in 2018, reports
suggested that Sberbank, which holds a "golden share" in the company, is staging a hostile takeover of Yandex. But as the founders and shareholders of Russia’s most valuable digital company made changes to the shareholder structure, no deal followed. In 2019, Sberbank preferred Rambler Group to Yandex as the main media platform for its growing digital ecosystem.
Vedomosti and the Bell point to the potential conflict of interests, owing to Sberbank's golden share in Yandex and the CEO of the banker German Gref sitting on Yandex's board.
"Yandex has initially constructed [a] relationship with Sberbank as a long-term mutually beneficial partnership," the CFO of the company, Greg Abovsky, told Vedomosti. Yandex is abiding by these principles and hopes Sberbank will do the same, he added.
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