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bne December 2019 Companies & Markets I 21
• Transactions involving the sale or transfer of Russian users’ personal data to non-Russians
• Changes to Yandex internal policies on protection of Russian users’ personal data
• Entry into agreements with a non-Russian state or international intergovernmental organisations
The members of the 11 person PIF include: “representatives from five leading Russian universities (Higher School of Economics, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Moscow State University, St Petersburg State University and the St Petersburg National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics) and three non-governmental institutions (the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), Moscow School of Management Skolkovo and the Endowment of Moscow School #57), all of which have long and successful histories of cooperation with Yandex. The PIF board will also include three representatives of Yandex management (Arkady Volozh, Tigran Khudaverdyan and Elena Bunina),” Yandex said.
Volozh has also changed the rules surrounding his shares and they votes they carry. As part of the deal he has agreed to lock up 95% of his shares for at least years, meaning he can’t sell during this period.
It was also agreed to change the rules surrounding the transfer of his majority voting rights in the event of his death. Volozh has now set up a family trust and in the event of his death the shares will be transferred to the trust for two years. The representative of the trust trust is obliged to vote in line with the board, in order to ensure business continuity. This arrangement is designed to provide some breathing space for shareholders to organise an orderly transition to a new management structure if Volozh were to die.
Capping foreign ownership
While Volozh didn't directly address the new draft law capping the foreign ownership in his email, clearly the changes are a result of the general problem of the increasingly important role of tech companies in the make up of a country’s economy and the legitimate national security concerns. Following the Second World War European countries adopted national agricultural policies as food supplies became a question of national security, and today technology has reached the same point. Tech is the new grain.
The bill introduced to the State Duma by lawmaker Anton Gorelkin, prohibiting foreign legal entities from owning
more than 20% of internet information resources deemed significant for Russian infrastructure, follows on from a similar law that banned foreigners from owning 20% of press outlets in 2015 that caused a major shake-up in the industry.
Gorelkin has admitted that his bill is specifically aimed at Yandex and Mail.ru. According to him, Yandex is exactly
the type of company it seeks to regulate: it’s registered in
the Netherlands, 85% of its charter capital is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, and 49.2% of its voting rights belong to founder Volozh, who is a citizen of Malta as well as Russia.
“In reality, however, the presidential administration – specifically deputy chief of staff Sergey Kiriyenko, who oversees domestic policy – is behind both laws, according to several sources in internet companies and the federal bureaucracy. And, in this campaign, the bureaucracy and security agencies have found common cause with businessmen tied to the Russian state,” Alexandra Prokopenko of the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace wrote in a paper recently.
Turkish asset manager ‘to launch first-of-kind fund with foreign partner to invest in corporate NPLs’
bne IntelliNews
Turkish asset manager Actus Portfoy is reportedly in the final stage of launching a first-of-its-kind-in-Turkey $150mn fund with a foreign partner to invest in non- performing loans (NPLs) weighing down corporates.
Reuters on October 25 reported a source with direct knowledge of the effort as saying Actus Portfoy – a unit of Global Yatirim Holding that manages Turkish lira (TRY) 830mn ($144mn)
– would manage the fund and was in talks to find a foreign partner. Actus has done some hiring, they added.
Last year’s currency crisis plunged Turkey into recession and
sent NPL rates soaring with construction, energy and other companies unable to service tens of billions of dollars of foreign-currency debt.
“[Actus is] conducting talks to find a foreign partner for the fund, they are setting up a team for that. This fund will be in an independent structure,” the person, who requested anonymity, was cited as saying.
“The fund will operate like a special purpose vehicle. It
will make equity investments and receive stakes from the companies, and the fund will be a shareholder,” they added.
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