the authorities have limited the purchase of foreign currency in the Russian market under the deal “Yandex” with Uber – Kommersant

The subcommittee of the Russian government commission on foreign investment control approved the Yandex deal with Uber on February 21, a source said. “Interfax”. According to the source, the condition for approval was the restriction of daily currency purchases on the Russian foreign exchange market by Yandex Technologies in the amount of $150 million to pay for the transaction. Accordingly, in order to receive the amount of $ 702.5 million, for which Yandex bought out the remaining share of Uber in the Yandex Taxi group of companies, the purchase of the currency had to be stretched for at least five trading sessions.

Yandex declined to comment on this information. The daily limit of $150 million is standard for such transactions, now the authorities are discussing the introduction of a general limit for them to reduce the risks of volatility in the foreign exchange market. notes Interfax. So, in December 2022, the subcommittee allowed Norilsk Nickel to pay off its debt to UniCredit in the amount of just over $500 million ahead of schedule, also under the currency purchase limit of $150 million per day.

As a result closed today, April 21, the transaction “Yandex” became the sole owner of the “Yandex Taxi” group of companies. Yandex closed the deal to buy out Uber’s stake in the Yandex Taxi group of companies. The remaining 28.98% were acquired for $702.5 million, thus the company became the sole owner of Yandex.Taxi. With this deal, Yandex completed the “consolidation of ridetech and foodtech lines of the company’s business.”

At the beginning of April 2023, the ruble weakened to 82 rubles/$. These figures were exactly one year ago. Bloomberg agency tied this is with the Shell-NOVATEK deal. Having sold its stake in Sakhalin-2, Shell withdrew the proceeds from Russia by converting the rubles into dollars. We are talking about an amount of almost $ 1 billion, and such a volume could affect the quotes, the agency believes. Bank of Russia and Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation urged do not overestimate the influence of this factor.

Maria Fedotova