Artem Savinovsky appointed general director of Yandex Russian operating subsidiary

MOSCOW. April 14 (Interfax) - Artem Savinovsky has been appointed as General Director of Yandex LLC, the Yandex group's principal Russian operating subsidiary, effective from April 15, 2022, the internet company said in a press release.

Savinovsky will replace Elena Bunina, who had served as General Director since December 2017. He will also continue to serve as Head of Media Services, a role he has held since 2016.

Savinovsky joined Yandex in 2008 to oversee the company's financial reporting, analytics and planning, and since then has contributed to a number of key projects, including Yandex's NASDAQ floatation and the development strategy for Yandex Taxi. In May 2016 he became Head of Media Services responsible for the division's strategy and the development of the leading services, including video-on-demand platform KinoPoisk, music streaming services Yandex Music and Yandex cross-segment subscription program Yandex Plus. Prior to joining Yandex, Savinovsky worked in the audit division of Ernst & Young, where he was involved in providing audit services to a number of large public companies in the technology, media and telecommunications sector. He graduated from the faculty of Economics at Moscow State University.

Initially, the plan was to appoint Tigran Khudaverdyan, then managing director of Yandex Group, as Yandex general director. However, Khudaverdyan quit the company because of sanctions imposed on him, and Bunina was made acting general director of Yandex Russia until April 15.

Bunina worked at Yandex for almost 15 years, becoming its HR director in 2011. In 2017 she was appointed as General Director of Yandex Russia in 2017. She decided to leave the company at the beginning of April.