Page 193 - RusRPTApr23

Yandex N.V. Volozha - the "foreign part" - as expected, will receive licences for the development of taxi drones, cloud services, Yandex.Practicum and the Toloka data markup project. It is possible that this company will receive an additional $300-400mn.
The main news relates to the ownership structure of the future Russian company. It is assumed that 51% of "Russian Yandex" will be received by investors, and a minority stake of 49% will be retained by Yandex N.V. This share is estimated at about $4bn.
According to RBC, top management has compiled a list of 20 billionaires they want to see among investors. The list, for example, includes metallurgists Vladimir Lisin, Viktor Rashnikov and Vladimir Potanin, owners of mineral fertilizer producers Vyacheslav Kantor and Andrey Guryev, Magnit founder Sergey Galitsky, and even the “king of Moscow real estate” God Nisanov and Wildberries founder Tatyana Bakalchuk.
None of the representatives of businessmen with whom RBC was able to contact confirmed their interest in Yandex, and one of the sources of the publication said that "many from this list will be surprised that they are even there." According to the interlocutor of The Bell, now the company is really trying to gather a consortium of investors, but so far it has not been successful. The main reason is the risks of potential shareholders, including sanctions. “They are impossible to predict, and when the bill goes into the billions, those who are willing to take risks are few,” he explains.
● VK
Russia’s leading social media platform VK has taken advantage of the crisis to snap up assets and expand its business in 2022, but at a cost. Faced with some big M&A bills and poorly performing acquisitions, the company has taken a significant financial hit to its balance sheet.
“VKontakte continued to strengthen its leading position among Russian social networks: the average monthly active users in October-December 2022 grew by 9.6% on the year to a record of 79.5mn users. The global average audience of VKontakte in October-December 2022 reached a record high of 101.7mn monthly active users, while the average daily active users in Russia grew by 8.9% compared to October-December 2021, to a record of 51.1mn users,” VK said in a statement.
While other online businesses have been hurt by sanctions like search engine Yandex and online bank Tinkoff. VK has the backing of the Kremlin, which has been using it to increase its control over the internet by proxy.
Formerly owned by Russian tycoon Alisher Usmanov, he sold his stake in
193 RUSSIA Country Report Russia April 2023 www.intellinews.com