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July 26, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 4
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"[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.