(Bloomberg) -- Yandex NV founder Arkady Volozh has returned to lead a much-diminished version of the company he built and that just sold off Russia’s leading search engine.
Yandex NV, which is registered in the Netherlands, finalized a deal to sell its Russian business, which made up most of its revenue, the company said in a statement on Monday. It will be renamed Nebius Group after shareholder approval and focus on developing its own projects. Volozh will oversee the process as the firm’s chief executive officer, according to two people familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified before an official announcement.
A representative for Yandex NV declined to comment.
Yandex NV came under intense pressure both in Russia and abroad following the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, before reaching an agreement earlier this year to sell its Russian business for 475 billion rubles ($5.4 billion) in a cash and stock deal to a consortium of Russian buyers. The cash component of the transaction was completed in May. The share transfer was finalized this month, according to the statement.
Volozh, 60, resigned as Yandex’s chief after the European Union sanctioned him in 2022 for the company’s role in promoting Russian propaganda and disinformation about the war. The following year he publicly denounced the invasion of Ukraine for the first time.
In March, the EU lifted the sanctions on Volozh, who lives in Israel.
The Dutch company will seek to develop technology for self-driving cars, cloud storage, data labeling and ed-tech projects, Bloomberg reported previously. The size of its investments will depend how much money the sale of the Russian unit nets, according to the people.
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