I’m sure this will go very well for Yandex. Surely they will be welcomed with open arms by the West, and will definitely be able to continue to capitalise on the Russian market.
My impression is that the Dutch parent company that owned Yandex got forced out of Russia. NYT just intentionally obscures that in the article. The give away is:
That value represents roughly half of Yandex’s current market capitalization, a reflection of steep discounts that the Kremlin has imposed to punish companies that have tried to leave the country and are based in countries that the Kremlin considers unfriendly.
What they’re saying there is that it was a forced sale at half the value to a Russian buyer that took over Yandex.
Its a small price for the executives “to pay” to be able to fly private jets safely. ~Brace Belden, (I mean, he probably would say it)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The invasion had roiled Yandex — often referred to as “Russia’s Google” — and turned its attempts to navigate between the Kremlin’s authoritarian policies and a Western blockade of the Russian economy into the most dramatic example of the war’s impact on the country’s once-vaunted tech sector.
“For us, it is important that the company continues to operate inside our country,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told reporters on Monday, referring to Yandex.
The buyers of Russia’s most recognizable tech company do not include any prominent members of the country’s business elite, a reflection of YNV’s difficult task of finding investors with large enough pockets but without direct connections to the Russian government or sanctioned officials and oligarchs.
The group of buyers is led by some of Yandex’s Russian management team, and includes tech entrepreneur Alexander Chachava and an investment fund owned by Russia’s largest private oil company, Lukoil.
After the invasion of Ukraine, at least three senior Yandex executives publicly condemned the war, becoming some of the most prominent Russian businessmen to break with the government line.
The European Union has sanctioned Yandex’s founder, Arkady Volozh, and its deputy chief executive at the time, Tigran Khudaverdyan, for enabling Russia’s war effort, forcing them to step down from the company to maintain its access to Western financial services.
The original article contains 889 words, the summary contains 219 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
