Rumoured Sale of Russian Giant Yandex to Consortium That Owns Rival Avito

Forbes is reporting that Russian marketplace giant Yandex is in talks for a buyout by a Russian-led consortium of investors.

The group of investors may include high-profile Russian businessman Ivan Tavrin and billionaire Vladimir Potanin and would represent one unified structure to purchase Yandex's entire Russian business interests.

According to Forbes' source at Yandex, the consortium "will buy everything"—with Reuters quoting a rumoured figure of 560 Billion roubles ($6.18Bn) with another source quoting $5Bn. Both figures would represent just 50% of the total investment because the Kremlin would demand an additional 50% for foreign asset sales.

Interestingly, Tavrin became the owner of Avito in 2022 via his investment vehicle Kismet Capital Group (KCG). However, KCG has distanced itself from any Yandex deal so far.

Yandex is currently facing delisting from Nasdaq—the business has been forced to divest from Russian-owned assets including Auto.ru and Yandex Realty as a consequence of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and has until the end of 2023 to do so.