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Yandex, Russia's Answer To Google, Warns It May Not Be Able To Pay Its Debts (cnn.com) 127

Posted by msmash from the bleed-continues dept.
Russia's biggest search engine could collapse as financial fallout from the invasion of Ukraine spreads. From a report: Yandex, which handles about 60% of internet search traffic in Russia and operates a big ride-hailing business, says it may be unable to pay its debts as a consequence of the financial market meltdown triggered by the West's unprecedented sanctions. The company is based in the Netherlands, but its shares are listed on the Nasdaq and the Russian stock exchange.

Dealing in the stock has been suspended this week as the value of Russian assets collapsed in Moscow and around the world in the wake of the invasion. The imposition of sanctions by the United States, European Union and other big Western economies last weekend piled on the pressure. Yandex hasn't been sanctioned but it could still default. Investors who hold $1.25 billion in Yandex convertible notes have a right to demand repayment in full, plus interest, if trading in its shares are suspended on the Nasdaq for more than five days. The Moscow stock market will remain shut at least until Tuesday, Russian state news agencies reported on Friday.
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Yandex, Russia's Answer To Google, Warns It May Not Be Able To Pay Its Debts More

Yandex, Russia's Answer To Google, Warns It May Not Be Able To Pay Its Debts

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  • I was watching the Vaneck Russia etf (RSX} and people are still trading that crap. {buying pennies for dollars). Anyone trying to get cheap Russian equities are just picking up pennies in front of a steamroller and will get crushed. No way Russian stock exchanges open Tuesday..

    • Re:Picking up pennies in front of steamroller? (Score:4, Funny)

      by sinij ( 911942 ) on Friday March 04, 2022 @12:41PM (#62326335)
      Yes, this is very risky move, but it could pay off in a big way. For example, Vlad "falls down some stairs" and the next guy rolls it back and blames everything on Putin. Now these stocks have value.

      • Not such a bad FP thread, though I strongly disagree. The modern stock market has nothing to do with real "equity" of the companies. It's all about timing with a bit of disguise in the illegal cases. Sad to say, but Putin is controlling most of the timing, and as long as he knows when, then he can make gigantic profits (but assuming he can still hide the money trails). For example, if Putin can profit by opening the Moscow stock market at a particular time, then you can bet he'll do that, and voila, you can

        • Is yandex causing spam ? I have multiple yandex email addresses, and they are far less a victim of spam, than Gmail. Though that may mean nothing in the direction of yandex causing spam.

          Do you have any references?

    • Pennies in front of steamroller means playing with leverage. In an of itself this is just a long odds bet.

      Putin could croak tomorrow and be replaced with a more accommodative ruler, never know.

    • The thing is, you never know they might try something desperate and stupid like try to open and halt the collapse by spending a lot of money. It is not likely, but one never knows.

      If that happens then there might be a window to sell at say 10%-30% of their pre-crash values if one is fast enough (Ie, not normal people but institutional traders who follow tings 24/7) .

      Thus getting something for, say 1% of value and 10% chance to get back 20%+ value in short time.. might be possible for them they calculate. An

      • Even if the Russian stock exchange opens, foreigners will be prohibited from selling shares or any other assets. And the Russian government won't be buying assets on foreign exchanges. So even if you own an ETF listed on a non-Russian exchange and it holds Russian assets, the only way to convert to cash would be to sell to another foreign investor. If you want to buy these things pennies-on-the-dollar, you'd better be prepared to hold for a *very* long time.
        • I would also imagine they would delist any valuable / strategic resource companies and fully nationalize them. People are just kidding themselves if they buy any Russian etfs or equities when exchanges open (if your broker allows it) for more than 0.5C bids. Things are going to get more freaky before normalizing.
        • A number of asset funds have already indicated that they're dumping 100% of Russian stock as soon as the markets open again. So they'll either need to keep the markets closed for the indefinite future or be prepared for a meltdown that makes 1929 look trivial in comparison. Given that at most a few pennies-on-the-dollar speculators will be buying and everyone else will be dumping as quickly as they can, you won't be able to give some of those stocks away.
          • I think you are a bit confused about how these markets work. Russian stocks are listed on Russian exchanges. Foreigners aren't allowed to sell any stock on the Russian exchanges. Some of them have "depository receipts" traded on European/US exchanges. Those are basically shares taken out of circulation on the Russian stock exchange and traded on overseas exchanges. Those can be sold. But the only buyers are other overseas buyers. The exchange doesn't happen on the Russian stock exchange. Foreign own

      • "they might try something desperate and stupid like try to open and halt the collapse by spending a lot of money,,,If that happens then there might be a window to sell at say 10%-30% of their pre-crash values"

        Unlikely; the only money they have a lot of to spend is their own Monopoly money, which wouldn't accomplish anything.

        • The Russian stock exchange trades in rubles and the Russian government certainly could offer bids on stocks. Remember, foreigners can't sell, so they'd be buying equities denominated in rubles owned by Russian citizens and paying rubles. Foreign owners will get nothing for their shares whether the market is open or not.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      I keep seeing people posting about how this all blows over at somepoint and these companies have to recover. At one level I think they are actually correct but they seem to not be aware of a couple things.

      First)
      If you can trade anything at all at this point its an ADR or GDR not the actually company. Don't know what that means? You'd better before you pump cash into it. Short versions is its a contractual construct not direct equity. Sanctions and embargo have a nasty potential to make it impossible for t

      • >Point is while I am sure there are plays, Trying it as retail investor, you are likely better off with with gas station lotto tickets.

        Yes, the return % is likely way higher with lottery.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mspohr ( 589790 )

        Looks like Aeroflot will also go out of business in a month. Can't get spares or maintenance (its main maintenance hub is in Germany), can't make payments on its leased planes which will be repossessed. Can't fly anywhere except domestically.

        • leased planes which will be repossessed

          The Russian govt decided to nationalize leased planes, without compensation. So at least domestically, Aeroflot will survive. And there's quite a few countries that will allow stolen planes to fly -- basically, any routes other than westwards.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mspohr ( 589790 )

            Good luck with that.
            They will eventually be returned to owner.

            • Unlikely. And, more importantly, even if they are repossessed, it's likely that they will have been operated without proper servicing for so long that they won't be considered airworthy when recovered and will have to be scrapped.

              • Do you think that they would be able to operate planes without maintenance even on internal flights?
                Russian aviation authority would object.

                • Russian aviation authority will stop objecting if those are the only planes available. At some point they will, of course, get replaced with Russian-made planes. Russia has been trying to build and export planes. Now there is no overseas market. The aviation authority isn't going to allow maintenance to be skipped entirely but knock-off parts will be allowed and other compromises so that those planes can be used as long as necessary until they are domestically replaced. At that time maybe they will eve
          • And presumably they can use locally made knock-off parts to keep them flying for quite a while. Although some countries will allow stolen planes to fly, many might *not* allow planes to fly that don't meet safety requirements, which the stolen planes will not. But yeah they should be able to operate for quite some time.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            The Russian govt decided to nationalize leased planes, without compensation. So at least domestically, Aeroflot will survive. And there's quite a few countries that will allow stolen planes to fly -- basically, any routes other than westwards.

            Except now you have to plan your routes around friendly countries. Because if you accidentally stray into the wrong country, then your stolen plane will be repossessed.

            Plus, knowing you're flying stolen planes limits your future opportunities to leasing more planes - i

  • If the company was heavily multinational this is the end. If it was a purely Russian company with a Dutch PO box for investment reasons, I assume the core of the company will just keep going on in Russia while their paper burns in the west.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nadass ( 3963991 )
      It was an European-wide outfit, ultimately.

      They might survive but in a severely battered manner incapable of keeping up with innovation. Their own index wouldn't update except to reflect new misinformation published within Russia (yay). And they never have the resources to acquire/expand their portfolio without monies from Western Europe.

      And there lies the issue: The creditors have International Courts on their side to force repayments (in whatever currency, at whatever exchange rates) to be made whole.
  • College kids can't get food delivery from Yandex robots anymore. https://abcnews.go.com/Busines... [go.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bjwest ( 14070 )
      Maybe they could walk to the cafeteria to get their food? I swear if things keep going like they are with robot deliveries, robot driven vehicles (not quite yet, but soon, I'm sure), and facetiming instead of personal interactions, we'll be living in Isaac Asimov's I Robot world, where people are appalled with in-person interactions of any type, within 15 years or so.

  • The dominos keep falling (Score:3)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Friday March 04, 2022 @12:56PM (#62326397)

    The European branch of Sberbank is now insolvent. Yandex is on the verge of collapse. Lukoil is asking Russia to stop the war. Foreign companies have stopped operations in Russia. Russian stocks traded in Europe and elsewhere are in the pennies. The Russian stock market hasn't opened in a week. Ratings companies are now classifying Russia as uninvestable. The rouble is almost worthless.

    This is only week one of the sanctions. Imagine how much fun will happen in week two.

  • Apparently the fine group of supposed Americans known as Republicans are using servers in Russia hosted by Yandex [imgur.com]. This has been going on since at least 2014. As the posters wrote, one has to wonder why this would be done other than to prevent their emails from being read by law enforcement.

    This reminds me of the scene from Serenity where the assassin brings up the point the scientists let a psychic in a room with the top military and political minds of the Alliance.

  • He's stuck in the cold war era and thinks domination is won by military might and conquest, which is an absolute joke. Might is won by economic means in the 21st century, and he is destroying Russia's.

    Even his excuses are laughably full of old boomer energy. Yes, I'm sure Nato is going to come to your borders someday and try to conquer you, what with your thousands of shitty old but functional (probably mostly) nukes. That's totally a real thing that could happen, great grandpa, better start a pre-emptive w

    • >He's stuck in the cold war era and thinks domination is won by military might and conquest, which is an absolute joke. Might is won by economic means in the 21st century

      It is currently a combination of multiple factors and the use of military power is still one of them.

      If you look at the current top dog, US:
      1)US is very willing to use military power for it's ends and maintains a huge, well funded and trained army.
      2)US is a huge economic power and thus has economic power that it uses.
      3)US is also a huge

      • Right, but even looking at military power you need the economy to drive it. China knows this. The US knows this. Great Great Grandpa Vlad thinks he can just use sturdy Russian blood as grist for the mill.

        Looks like Russia can't do an economy, so I guess they're going the NK route and will just become a terrorist state extorting money with their nukes.

        This is watching Russia commit national suicide in slow motion. Which is extremely fucking dangerous because they have thousands of nukes.

        I don't get why Linds

        • >Sure, there's a risk that someone worse could take over but that's probably a pretty small risk.

          At least the next one could claim that he was not involved, stop the war and make noises to be better than Putin. As even if he would be overall worse than Putin, even the dumbest person should know that the current plan of using just the military is not working so the current war would likely stop. In the long run of course someone else could be worse.. but not very likely.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Does it look like he's going to deescalate? It's not happening. And Graham wasn't saying we should kill him, he was saying Russia should deal with him because it's their country he's driving into the shitter.

      • And the US uses it's influence to promote freedom, democracy, and human rights. And the world also has enjoyed a Pax Americana. I guarantee you that if Russia and China got into a contest about which country could have the freest press, the fairest elections, the least corruption, and the most respect for human rights, they wouldnt' find themselves in competition with the US. Now there's an idea.

  • I'd hate to lose Yandex. Their image search often gives better results than anyone else. Google used to be the gold standard, but it has become very hit-and-miss, and had many options removed.

  • I'm hoping that clickhouse development and support keeps on churning. That DB is great!

  • That would be a shame. They were one of very few providers where you could still get an account without mandatory phone verification. I would miss them.

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