Russian tech giant Yandex, and four Russia-affiliated internet companies will be formally delisted from U.S. stock exchanges.
A year ago, trading was halted for the firms in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Yandex, the so-called 25 “The Google of Russia,” owing to its products spanning search, e-commerce, advertising, maps, transportation, and more, first went public on Nasdaq in May, 2011, via a parent holding company called Yandex N.V. that’s registered in the Netherlands.
Yandex had been performing well as a public company, reaching an all-time high in November, 2021, with a market cap of $31 billion.
In the months that followed, Yandex’s shares went into freefall as Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine, leading Nasdaq to put a temporary halt on trading in February, 2022.
Back in November, Yandex announced plans for a corporate restructuring that would distance itself from its Russian roots through further divestments, while leveraging its existing international presence in areas such as self-driving cars, and cloud computing.
However, Yandex wasn’t the only Russian company impacted by geopolitical turmoil. Nasdaq last year halted trading in online recruitment platform HeadHunter; e-commerce player Ozon, which has been called the Amazon of Russia; and Russian fintech Qiwi, which claims an official headquarters in Cyprus.
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), meanwhile, halted trading in Russian real estate database company Cian, which also is officially based in Cyprus.
Yesterday, Nasdaq alerted its four companies that delisting proceedings were underway, with Yandex, HeadHunter, Ozon, and Qiwi‘s delisting-day scheduled for March 24.
Yandex has said that it will appeal the decision, while Ozon has confirmed that it’s considering filing an appeal.
