Yandex N.V. preparing potential employees for "relaunch," with new brand at start of 2024

MOSCOW. Aug 22 (Interfax) - Dutch Yandex N.V ., the holding company of Yandex, is preparing potential employees of its international business, which is planned to be spun off as part of the upcoming corporate restructuring, for a quick "relaunch" under a new brand.

Several job descriptions posted on LinkedIn say the revamped company is slated to launch in early 2024.

The restructuring of Yandex involves separating it into Russian and international businesses: the Russian business is planned to be transferred to "management," while Yandex N.V. will come out of the ranks of the owners of the Russian business. It is assumed that the Dutch company will take over the international parts of the business associated with the cloud, drones, education and the company's crowdsourcing platform.

"As part of the current transition process, known as Project LEFT, we are creating a new company that intends to become a leading player in the technology market in Europe and the Middle East," reads the job description for a document workflow specialist.

Project LEFT is the working title of the corporate restructuring project itself, a source familiar with its terms told Interfax. The name of the future company has not yet been announced, he added.

The headquarters of Yandex N.V. is located in Amsterdam. In addition, Yandex has large offices in Tel Aviv and Belgrade.

Yandex indicated in its annual report that it plans to bring the issue of restructuring to shareholders for consideration during 2023. At the same time, in June, the American Nasdaq exchange allowed Yandex to keep its listing, subject to successful business restructuring by the end of the year. Maintaining the listing does not imply a resumption of trading, which was suspended on February 28, 2022.

Yandex's main shareholder is a family trust established by the company's co-founder Arkady Volozh. The fund owns 8.5% of Yandex's capital and 45.1% of the votes (in June last year, it stopped making decisions on voting with the company's shares. Now the vote takes the recommendations of the board of directors into account). Free float is 87.9% of the capital (46.5% of votes).