Good luck taking payments in Russia, then. Not to mention being registered in Europe but doing business in Russia is a huge, huge, huge issue - you are one shipment or IP transfer away from being raided for circumventing the sanctions.
I see you aren't aware that foreign companies can have local daughter companies that do business like any other local firms. And that Yandex has its operations smoothed over with the government long, long ago. Did you really think that one of the largest companies in the entire country, one of the leaders of the Runet, wouldn't talk about those things with the various agencies? Like, come into their offices and sit at a table with some of the agency's top dogs? Have you perhaps not heard of Yandex's ‘golden share’ owned, or previously owned, by Sberbank under explicit agreement with the government?
Any person in Russia mentioning the war in a way that the kgb dislikes is exposed to prison terms. You can't blame people who have to wake up in Russia for not actively pissing off their government via press release?
I'm not disputing the quality of the engineers or other employees at Yandex. So I'm not sure how that's relevant.
Regardless: Arkady issues a press release saying, "This war is fucking Yandex up, we have no idea what's going to happen, earning in ₽ but investments in $ ain't great, and this surely isn't going to increase uptake of Yandex products abroad."
What precisely is that going to do besides land his ass in YaG-14/10?
You know there's a modern proverb in Russian about doing business in Russia:
1. Do not establish any contracts with government.
2. Do not participate in any governmental organizations or organizations created with any support from the government as a member.
3. Do not have any assets in Russia, that can not be instantly moved out.
4. Do not have any business with any person who might be business partners, friends, clients, family of anyone controlling or participating or in any way related to Russian government. Especially the military or the internal security.
5. Do not have any business with any legal entity involving anyone from number 4. If you have to, always demand full prepayment and mind number 3.
6. Do not incorporate any businesses in Russia, whose activity might contradict goals of persons from number 4 or entities from number 5.
7. Do not create any high earning businesses in Russia. Exceptions are businesses based on intellectual property (that can be sheltered outside), or on personal skills/knowledge (that can't be taken away).
8. Never rely that the courts will take your side even in clear cut cases. Also never rely on any number of qualified lawyers telling you what you are doing is legal in Russia. No matter what the law says, the court can at any time decide otherwise.
9. Never let your business do anything unusual, if it is offered by any entity from numbers 4 and 5, even if (and especially when) certain preferential treatment is offered.
10. Never end up in situation where an immediate and irreversible need to leave Russia is impossible, or complicated, or would have high cost, or would threaten other people. Even if you are precisely following the rules 1-9.
Yandex definitely violates quite a few. Regardless, I can't imagine Yandex had a choice: between the data residency laws, and the Russian government's views on foreign investment, I don't think they could have kept their servers abroad.
Certainly after the theft of vk from Durov everyone knew what the deal is.
Or they are a huge company that doesn't want to put their Russian employees in the crosshairs of a government that's quickly reverting to Soviet-style authoritarianism.
This is directed at western markets. Nobody needs to be told there’s a war on, The company would just expose itself to useless additional risk from the Russian government.
Now I’d wish they’d choose to go down in glory and spread the truth in every way they can, as long as they can. Because in four weeks they are gone no matter what. So far, it doesn’t look like it.
But this press release is just „not being stupid“.
Yandex employees are among the tech elite in Russia—overwhelmingly well-educated, liberal, and cosmopolitan. They were opposed to the Crimea invasion in 2014.
This is such a poor argument. It is not like a Russian programmer working in Russia has tons of well paying job options. They can work there because they get to work on interesting problems. Clickhouse came from inside Yandex.
Just because they have to toe the line of a goverment where they operate, should they stop serving the hundreds of millions of Russian people.
Isn't Twitter toeing the line of EU while censoring RT? Not that RT was publishing truth anyway but my point is companies toe the line on the basis of where they operate.
You don't expect Baidu to put the image of Tank man on their home page.
Should Apple employees have quit when the iPhones they designed were being manufactured by labour working in inhumane conditions? At least that was something that Apple could have easily controlled instead of trying to maximize the margins on their products.
In ordinary times, I wouldn't expect Russian citizens living in a brutal autocracy to pursue unrealistic civil disobedience. But these are not ordinary times. While Ukrainian civilians are being shelled, Russian civilians should not expect to live in security and contentment.
Sometimes you have to take scummy jobs to keep a roof over your family’s head.
In fairness, they weren’t supporting a warring regime a month ago. I won’t say I would have worked at Yandex then but it wouldn’t have been the reflexive “no” that it is now.
If it were possible to target sanctions directly at the war's cheerleaders, that would be great. It's not, and so sanctions harm Russians in the aggregate in the hopes of bringing down support in the aggregate.
> In the event that such redemption right was triggered, we would be required to issue a notice within five calendar days informing the holders of the Notes of their redemption rights.
Given:
> The Yandex group as a whole does not currently have sufficient resources to redeem the Notes in full
Yandex seems destined to bankruptcy and/or just walking away from the west.
Just because the right to redeem exists doesn't mean it will be used. Creditors might be unlikely to redeem if it they knew it would result in a default.
Except their claim is over a holding company that has lost all hold over it's actual profit generating subsidiaries:
> In the event that we were prevented from distributing additional funds from our Russian subsidiaries to our Dutch parent company, Yandex would not have sufficient resources to redeem a majority of the Notes
Better take the 50% haircut than the long game that gets you nothing.
There's a risk foreign currency held by Yandex might be sold to RUB per a Russian government order. I'd rather have shareholders cash out than have these assets fall into the hands of sanctioned entities.
If it was a single creditor they could evaluate the situation and make an optimal decision. If it's a group of them, now you have a prisoner's dilemma. You don't want to be the last one pondering your move when everyone else has already redeemed their share and left the bag empty.
And they only have $625million of cash, of which only a portion is outside of Russia. They also state they may not be able to raise the balance of the note...this is a perfect shitstorm.
Screw them. They maintain the news.yandex which on purpose ignored the war and presented the government view on the situation. (and for last few years they never showed any kind of news associated with dissidents like Navalny, or other unpleasant for government topics). So yandex deserves what they get, they are complicit.
Obviously there are a lot of good people working in the company, but they'll find new jobs, as they are at least not dead or displaced, like a million refugees from Ukraine.
Moldova just announced that if you openly support the war/the Russian invasion in neighbouring Ukraine you risk prison, so it can also go the other way. I sort of understand why Moldova is doing it (small country a throne's stone away from Odessa and the Russian troops), the idea is that all sides are giving up democracy and the rule of law as fast as they can (the West a little slower, but it's following the same path).
I hope you're honourably on your way to Ukraine then.
If you're willing to condemn them and their families to 15 years of prison for "honour", it's the least you could do.
My point is that it's extremely easy to condemn people online, but 99% of Westerners have never even had a contrarian position, let alone a contrarian position against an authoritarian government.
Canadians had a hint of it during the Trucker Protest if they donated and had their banking cancelled, but that's been about as close as the West has been to this sort of regime.
>let alone a contrarian position against an authoritarian government.
I think this is the meat of it. Plenty of westerners have some level of contrarian positions, but we don't face real resistance for it and thus fall into the trap of thinking it's easy for everyone else.
That law was signed yesterday. Yandex has been operating for 25 years. Let's not pretend that they are the victim here. The Russian oligarchy has been fully complicit and even instrumental in getting the country to the state it is in today. Yandex itself has been an arm of Putin's government for many years (https://www.ft.com/content/dce2e23c-15c5-11ea-8d73-6303645ac...).
You are right it didn't start yesterday. Over the years Putin slowly but surely took control over all main media and news sources and the country let him with little to no resistance, but today it is too late. The remaining liberal channels were shut down this week.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-prosecutors-dem...
The point of sanctions is to make people like these Yandex employees discontented. Before they could shrug their shoulders, going along with it because there was little choice, and live their lives in stability and comfort, sheltered from the atrocities perpetrated by their government. But now they are harmed through economic retaliation. Ideally it drives down Russian support for the war and Putin's popularity, which right now are disgustingly high.
Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, it's drastic and heavily coercive, and it's arguably collateral damage. But it's not like these Russian programmers are having their apartments shelled. This is war through other means, and war is hell.
Long before the censorship, when they got plenty of leverage to meaningfully resist it, Yandex was one of the first companies supporting the "Safe Internet League", along with Vimpelcom and others. They were the first to run to Kremlin in an attempt to strike a deal to guarantee themselves a place under the sun in a brave new world, long before the first censorship laws were even discussed.
Yandex picked the sides long ago, and now they are paying for being on the wrong side of the history. They aren't just complicit in censorship somehow, they are the censors themselves.
And all thoee buckets of cash they are bragging about mean nothing. No rational person would be sending money into Russia right now, let alone converting dollars into rubles. The money outside of Russia today will stay outside. The money still inside Russia will diminish in value, that is until it is siezed. Yandex's days as a going concern may be numbered. Thats what happens when a business is caught out straddling both sides of a new sanctions regime. Maybe they can buy a soccer team.
Do you have equal contempt for the New York Times which knowingly sold us a War in Iraq by constantly repeating a lie about WMD, resulting in 500,000 dead Iraqis?
There are no 'good guys' in this war.
- Putin is a brutal dictator.
- America is pushing an amazing amount of propaganda in this war while simultaneously sending arms and funds to back a Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen targeting civilians.
- Ukraine has enlisted openly white supremacist neo-nazi's in their national guard to fight Russia in the east.
- Facebook even unbanned the Ukranian Azov Brigade [0] this week as long as they are fighting the Russians [1]
This is a war with no heroes and no winners, even though we have been taught to hate the 'others' to the point of targeting everyday Russian citizens, even those who oppose Putin's actions.
The truth is the first casualty in times of war. Propaganda works on all of us. The best thing we can do is realize that fact.
How sure are you that at least some of that wasn't manufactured propaganda? You do realize that propaganda works for both sides and it can be hard to identify in the fog of war. All I am saying is that it pays to be skeptical in these troubling times.
That is fantastic and that man is most certainly a hero, no argument.
That said, my question was about how certain you were that at least some of the heroic acts you read or watched, were not some form of propaganda? Call me cynical but as soon as the conflict started I started investigating claims from both sides and I learned that a significant amount of what we heard early in this invasion turned out to be false propaganda.
You won't find 100% correctness even in peace time. That doesn't mean you can throw your hands in the air and assume that information from both sides of the conflict is on average equally (un)trustworthy.
There's tons of evidence to show the horrors of what Russia is doing in Ukraine, and stuff like the ghost of Kyiv is just a morale boost for Ukrainians and is utterly irrelevant.
So yes, you should of course be sceptical, but no amount of honest and fair scepticism will paint Russia's invasion in a significantly better light.
I don't expect you to watch this full video but will leave it here for anyone who is curious about the broader context for this conflict.
TL;DR: The war didn't start last week. It has been ongoing since 2014 and involves horrible acts from both sides.
No, they don't average out and unfortunately we may never know what the 'truth' is here.
I won't pretend to have all the answers, but I will say after watching the video, the situation appears to be much more complicated than it is being depicted on western media.
That is a decent factual YouTube video but it is laser focused on the title - what does Russia get out of invading Ukraine. There is no discussion at all of atrocities or moral controversies... Does the advertised curiosity stream series go into more details on that?
> Does the advertised curiosity stream series go into more details on that?
Not that I can find. They seem to be focused on military strategy and geopolitics. Their other videos are about the reasons behind other modern military conflicts.
I mean then we can't really use that video to judge or corroborate the morality / atrocities of the sides. And even for economics and politics, there is no analysis of balance or tradeoffs, just an exposition of what Russia wants. The video is still good information for those unaware, but only in the realpolitik sense, not as a source of moral or value judgements about the situation.
Today I learned. Just so we are clear, do we both agree that supporting Nazi soldiers is a bad thing no matter which side?
Also, it seems we both agree that invading another country and shelling civilians is also wrong, whether it is Russia or the US or others waging wars of aggression.
I'm with you on all points. Nazis are bad, of course. Invasions are bad. The reason I cared to comment is because Ukrainian Nazis are used as justification for the invasion in Russia.
But nazis exist in many countries, and are given legitimacy in many countries. In Ukraine they're paramilitary, in Russia they're a mercenary force, in Germany they sit in parliament (AFD), in US they have obvious affiliation with the political party that is in power half the time (and have strong legal protections for both their speech and guns).
All of that can be used as excuses to forcefully "denazify" a country, like Russia is doing now, but none of that are actually good reasons to invade those countries or deny any of those countries the right for independence, not even close.
If I may add my two cents: I disagree that supporting $BADGUY soldiers is always bad.
It's conceivable that in some situations, it seems likely to result in the less-evil outcome.
Case in point, suppose you had a neo-nazi unit offering to take out a Russian artillery battery that was shelling civilians. Do you refuse to truck them to that vicinity because you find them repugnant?
Would it change anything in your eyes to know that the Azov Batallion has been shelling civilian Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the Donbas region since 2014?
I am firmly of the position that no Nazi is a good Nazi. I am surprised to find myself in the minority here but based on the downvotes it is clear that my position is not a popular one.
Not really. The example I chose was already hypothetical, and not necessarily apropos to the current situation in Ukraine. The additional context you provided doesn't change my basic point that there's a calculation to be made.
> I am firmly of the position that no Nazi is a good Nazi.
I think we may be discussing two different things. I wasn't talking about the moral standing of individual Nazis. I was talking about the moral calculation of temporarily collaborating with them to possibly achieve a better outcome than not collaborating with them.
Extending the earlier example, suppose there's just one neo-nazi, who's offering to go on a suicide mission that will take out 1000 Russian artillery batteries, saving 500,000 Ukranians. And nobody but you would know, so the neo-nazi's actions couldn't even potentially inspire others.
Would you entertain the possibility that that is a good trade-off? If yes, then you might be agreeing that there's a calculation to be performed. If no, then I'd wonder why you'd find it preferable to let 500,000 Ukranians die.
(I'm not calling you a moral monster. I'm just trying to lay things out that shows there's an actual dilemma.)
I mentioned it because the AZOV Battallion are official paid members of Ukraine’s National Guard and have been since before 2014. I think that makes it worth mentioning.
How many other countries (that the West defends) can claim to have openly employed neo-Nazis officially by the Government for as long as Ukraine?
I am old enough to remember when an entire Canadian trucker convoy protest movement was smeared as Nazis because 1 protester held 1 nazi flag on the 1st day of a 24 day protest before being asked to leave by other protesters.
Checks notes - That was only a couple weeks ago.
Now it seems that so many are willing to look the other way or even apologize for employing literal Nazis with guns simply because these Nazis are fighting for the ‘right’ side.
For the record, it is OK to support Ukraine’s right to defend itself, while also denouncing the decision to employ Nazis.
A few weeks ago, I would have expected nothing less from HN. Suddenly it seems the rules have changed?
I believe those are relatively recent developments. The Azov Battalion by contrast have been active members of Ukraine's national guard since at least 2014.
I’ve never voted for a politician who voted for the Iraq war. If other Americans had the same stance, our politicians would stop getting us into wars like Iraq. It’s my #1 issue over anything else.
> - Ukraine has enlisted openly white supremacist neo-nazi's in their national guard to fight Russia in the east.
While they continue to fight for the sovereignty of a nation headed by a Jewish president I can see how they could be useful. Soldiers often aren't nice people. Most countries have at least a few hundred of these types of neo-Nazis.
No other country that is allied with western liberal democracies openly employs Neo-Nazis in any capacity to my knowledge, other than Ukraine.
Please share examples if you have them. It should be easy if, as you say “most countries have at least a few hundred.”
I’m struggling to understand how I am the minority here calling out what I always thought was a widely agreed principle on HN i.e. Nazis = bad.
Nazis are not the good guys and fighting alongside Nazis, even if convenient, is wrong. A few weeks ago this statement would have been so obvious as to be redundant on HN.
What if we win the war but lose our moral compass?
How do you explain to your kids that Nazis are bad except sometimes they are useful so not always bad?
Please explain how Yandex News is supposed to transmit anti-government news, when there's been a ‘news aggregators’ law for years, which specifically forbids them to do that.
That law that you mention requires only to publish news from officially registered media. At that moment there were officially registered not-pro-Putin media that could be used as a source (for example, covering anti-government protests, trial on Navalny and so on), but Yandex preferred to tune the algorithm so that it chooses news from pro-Putin media for the homepage that is seen by millions of people.
Yandex chose to become a propaganda outlet. Some of the news that they re-publish from propaganda media are very low quality and, I think, even violate Yandex's own rules. If you understand Russian, read this headline for example: [1]. For those, who don't understand Russian, the headline contains the word "shit" while describing (with rejoice) how Lyubov Sobol was denied to take part in Moscow State Duma elections. There was no law requiring Yandex to accept such publications for their news aggregator, but they accepted it.
Hmm, I looked into the law, and you seem to be right. Not sure now why the law was treated as the end of ‘independent’ Yandex News back then—though of course it was obvious that the gov wanted to control it and did everything it could think of, to that end. Personally I stopped paying attention to YN after that.
As for the example you cite: if it was found just in the ‘news search’, then it's possibly not from a source ‘certified’ for appearing in the main news feed—from what I've read, it seems that the search includes many more sources than the feed, and is possibly not regulated by that law.
This source is a "partner" of Yandex News [1]. Yandex has rules for "partners", and one of the requirements is "quality of headers" [2], although as we see, Yandex doesn't care much about it.
They still presented search results in their general search engine that were banned by Google (some of them because of stupid EU laws, some others because of stupid copyright laws), that was nice.
I suppose you don't call removal of LGBTP+ elements from the media released in Russia/China/MENA "censorship" either, just private companies exercising their rights, right?
> I suppose you don't call removal of LGBTP+ elements from the media released in Russia/China/MENA "censorship" either, just private companies exercising their rights, right?
I would call it censorship. But in those examples you listed, I would attribute it to the government and not the company. Because by removing those elements, they are not "exercising their rights to do so", they are "complying with local laws and regulations by doing so".
For a specific example: in Russia, "propaganda of homosexualty" (which includes something as trivial as explicitly acknowledging that one of the main characters is attracted to a person, or people in general, of the same sex) is against the law and is heavily punished.
So in reality, those companies only have two options: sell their product with those elements removed for that specific market or become unable to legally sell their product in that market at all.
Is it censorship? I would argue "yes", but I wouldn't say that the censorship is done by the company. If that action was required in order to be in compliance with local laws and regulations, I would call it for what it actually is - government censorship. After all, they are the ones making those laws and regulations that decide what is allowed and what needs to be removed.
Google can censor. Censorship is necessarily performed by an entity with the power to restrict information conveyance, but it is not necessary for them to be a government.
It is true that it is impossible for Google to violate the 1st Amendment (unless they were nationalized first).
And how exactly is Google prohibited from censoring? By definition?
They're a private company. They can do whatever they want within the limits of the law. And the law doesn't say anything about not publishing something. Which can be done for purposes of censorship.
>And how exactly is Google prohibited from censoring? By definition?
They're not a publisher. You have zero ability to post anything to Google, so there is nobody to be censored. They're an aggregator, and any aggregator can display whatever information they want.
that's because different countries have rules about what things can be shown with commercial satellite imagery. Canada for example has a way longer list than the USA does if that surprises you (potentially to avoid foreign conflict) which includes the max resolution and sale of imagery of taiwan, spratly islands, conflict zones in the middle east and more.
this isn’t black and white google is censored and yandex isn’t. they both censor in different ways. try the same searches on both you will see different results. i use yandex for some searches they are better at
It reminds me of a firewall joke, you use an American firewall to protect against the Russian backdoors, then a Russian firewall to protect against the American backdoors, and so on.
I assume you don't know there's a war in Ukraine happening right now then. Just take a look at the front page of https://yandex.com/news. It's like a different reality.
Calling censorship take downs due to copyright infringement and alikes seems like a stretch.
There's a difference between things taken down due to the political agenda of the government (Russia), and things taken down because they violate someone else's rights (West).
If I'm reading this correctly, if the NASDAQ suspends trading of Yandex on Monday it will be the 6th such day of trading suspension. Their "0.75% Convertible Notes" will be eligible for redemption and holders could demand $1.25 billion + interest when they only have $615 million + RUB 47 billion ($437 million) = ~$1.05 billion. And RUB is falling...
Posted a longer version of this which I deleted because I prefer yours. Yeah, it sounds like they're in trouble. And they're Russian Google with 70 products, so this is a big deal.
Not really such a big deal - there’s no function for yandex to fulfil if there’s no economy, no internet - I give it a week until Putin cuts all international routing.
Edit: see I’m being downvoted, probably because “that would never happen” - I think it’s very realistic that they will either shut down the internet domestically or they’ll cut all non-domestic routing - they want/need information control, and the internet is porous. If dissent continues in Russia, they will do it.
Daddy, daddy, can I have 20 RUB for some ice cream?
- Son, why do you need 25 RUB for some ice cream? 30 RUB is a lot of money! Before you ask me for 35 RUB, think about how long I have to work for 40 RUB!
It's bizarre that they even got into this situation. Betting your entire company on the fact that your stock will never get suspended from NASDAQ seems...unwise.
Company still exists, it would simply change hands -- the new owners of the assets would be the creditors or some benefit corporation for the creditors. Only if the creditors thought running the service was unprofitable would the company cease to exist.
That does not seem clear to me, surely it could continue existing within Russia only? They mention a rumor that business ownership may transfer due to sanctions, I think this is an instance where it would apply. Instead of liquidating the main IT business in the country the government may force it to fail to meet its international obligations.
Yes because all companies out there have a plan in case they'd get suspended from NASDAQ. Like it happens daily
True that there were lots of discussion for Chinese business getting suspended but was not the case for Russian till the start of this war (also their headquarter seems to be in the Netherlands)
The company itself is surely worth many billions of dollars, so can’t they just borrow from a national bank if they need additional cash for paying out bonds?
would that be even possible? I thought pretty much anyone working for them is physically located in Russia. Who would want to (or be allowed to) continue working for them if they suddenly were 100% a remote workforce based in RU?
That is unlikely because Yandex has a "Public Interest Fund" (which consists mostly of government-appointed people) that has significant power, including a right to temporarily replace the general director [1].
Wouldn’t this simply be voided by Russian law (or whatever it is called)? The same laws that currently prevents foreigners from selling stock in russian companies.
The Dutch part of Yandex may be bankrupted but the Russian part (with most of the assets) surely can continue.
They could demand it but can’t get it because it doesn’t exist. I don’t know if it is in the holders interest to do so; they’d destroy this company but pay for it themselves.
It's funny that Russia's largest tech company is actually Dutch.
It seems very odd to me that (1) NASDAQ can halt trading on any stock for any reason and (2) Yandex has promised its bondholders large considerations – enough to bankrupt the company – should their stock be suspended for more than 5 consecutive days. Even if you disregard the current crisis, how does a provision like 2 make sense for any company, considering 1? Was it just overconfidence? Or negligence?
It's a Russian founded, owned, operated, and dependent corporation that happens to be registered in Schiphol. It's not Dutch except for the registration.
Security reasons. If you own a company today, tomorrow it might belong to someone else. Russian courts are infamously far too flexible to tie any significant property to russian entities.
Kaspersky has too many ties with the authorities anyway.
Russia is infamous for pressing businessmen to give up their assets. Evgeny Chichvarkin and Mikhail Khodorkovsky are quite interesting examples (check them out on wikipedia).
In Russia we say "the 1st rule of making business in Russia is to not host your business in Russia". Yandex and jetbrains are a good example of this rule!
I really doubt that tax evasion was the primary goal of hosting Yandex's HQ in Netherlands
> Yandex has promised its bondholders large considerations – enough to bankrupt the company – should their stock be suspended for more than 5 consecutive days
I wouldn't say that they've promised large considerations. They've promised to redeem the bonds. If you bought the bonds assuming you'd convert them into stock and see a big gain, getting 0.75% interest on your money is really disappointing. I think it's also important to remember that before the Ruble fell off a cliff, they had around $1.25B in cash on hand.
They only promised bondholders "if we get delisted and therefore these aren't convertible bonds anymore (since we aren't trading), we'll redeem them from you at face value plus the 0.75% interest."
I'd also note that this feels like a release for regulatory requirements. I don't think Yandex expects all its investors to redeem their bonds. They're stating the risks even if the probability isn't high. I'm sure they're required to.
> how does a provision like 2 make sense for any company
The bonds carry almost no interest (just 0.75%) so Yandex was trading the convertibility of it into stock as a key selling point. If it isn't trading, then that convertibility isn't really something an investor can bank on.
I'd also note that the terms sheet from Yandex seems a bit more generous than their press release indicates. It's not just being beholden to the NASDAQ since they do seem to offer up the NYSE as an alternative remedy. It also seems like there's the possibility for the shares to be "admitted to trading and/or listing on another internationally recognised, regularly operating and regulated stock exchange," but given that they are trading on other exchanges that doesn't seem to cover it (it's really hard to parse the language around it, try reading the "delisting event" criteria https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1513845/000110465920...).
Frankly, some things are hard to prepare for - and preparing for the worst can put you in a bad position in the 99% of cases that aren't the worst. Should they have issued a bond at 8% interest rather than the convertible bonds at 0.75% interest? In the 99% of cases where Russia doesn't cause the world to go against it, that's potentially a huge waste of money that lets competitors get an opening against you. The NASDAQ isn't just suspending trading on companies on a whim. They have a compelling business interest to seem reliable to companies. The NYSE and NASDAQ are both reviewing new US sanctions to see how they'd fit in (https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/russia-ukraine-latest-news-...).
It's actually kinda shocking that the world is caring about this invasion. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and no one really cared. Russia invaded Ukraine (Crimea) in 2014 and no one really cared. Russia had already started things rolling in Eastern Ukraine (Donetsk) a year ago and no one really cared. It's probably coming as a huge shock to a lot ...
Many companies, like Netflix, are suspending services because they have no way of getting paid anymore. As of this week, Russians don't have credit cards or convertible currency anymore.
> Many companies, like Netflix, are suspending services because they have no way of getting paid anymore. As of this week, Russians don't have credit cards or convertible currency anymore.
That's not true. International payments with cards issued by non-sanctioned banks continue to work.
Some of them are, some of them are not. What's your point? Your original statement is emphatically not true because cards issued by many of the biggest consumer banks (among them Sberbank, Alfabank) continue to work internationally. And internally all cards continue to work. So please don't spread rumors if you don't have access to accurate information.
My original comments wasn't just about cards. If Russia is anything like the rrest of Europe, most people will have set it up with direct debit anyway.
The point is: the biggest reason for Netflix and co. is being unable to get paid through the channels people are using. The fact that you can if you're savvy was never the sort of hoops companies want to require their customers to jump through.
Please don't speak on the accuracy of comments when clearly you have no idea yourself.
If Russia, Inc. was a thing? Yeah maybe? If you're talking about just yandex, it's not securities fraud unless the executives had something to do with the invasion.
The joke is that pretty much anything that causes the stock to go down can be used as the basis of a securities fraud lawsuit. It's a recurring theme in his daily column.
I read his column, and I get the reference, but your characterization is incorrect. The stock going up/down needs to be caused by the company and/or its executives. For instance, "global warming causing the company to perform poorly" alone isn't securities fraud, but "global warming causing the company to perform poorly, and a few years before executives told shareholders global warming isn't real" is securities fraud.
Oof, I'm sure that there are quite a bunch of companies that are sufficiently rich and either government-owned or coincidentally close to Putin's clique, which would like to snatch Yandex when it's declared bankrupt. Can't remember if Sberbank still has the ‘golden share’ which gives the ultimate vote power—or if they passed it on to another gov company, or what became of it. But if it's still around then presumably Yandex won't be Dutch for much longer.
The ‘golden share’ has nothing to do with Sberbank's money. It's specifically an ultimate voting instrument, passed on to a government-owned company, under an agreement with the government that was worried about lack of control over Yandex.
Well, if I understand its powers right then now the government can use it to transfer the whole company to its buddies.
> in the event of a suspension of trading of our Class A shares on Nasdaq of more than five trading days, the holders of those Notes would have the right to require us to redeem their Notes at par plus accrued interest. The current principal amount outstanding is $1.25 billion
Slightly off topic, but I was shocked at how small Yandex's revenues are, given that they're basically a Google and an Uber for a major region. USD 4.94 billion in 2021. That's a large company, but for a major tech company, I thought they'd be at least 10x bigger than that. ServiceNow earns more: https://companiesmarketcap.com/servicenow/revenue/
Are my expectations of earnings for large global tech companies unrealistic, is this a currency valuation issue, or something else? This was very surprising to me.
Isn't Yandex only limited in Russia mostly? Economically they aren't big.
Weibo, a Twitter like platform that serves a billion Chinese only earn 3B USD I believe.
I think it's mostly because Russia's gdp is only 1.48t usd according to google.
Most of that is natural resources sounds like they have a pretty small consumer economy for a country that huge.
Google says google's annual rev is 256.7b while US gdp is 20.94t.
So is this math correct? Yandex rev as % of gdp 5bb/1.48tt = .337%, google rev as % of gdp 256bb/20.94tt = .855%
I might have guessed even less given how much more tech companies make even between a US consumer and even somewhere like Europe. Fb is $48/15 in one quarter, I couldn't find one quickly for google
Interesting I didn't know that term. That would definitely take more into account the size of their consumer market instead of Russia's being mostly state or oligarch owned extraction businesses.
But I think on the other hand also still shows the relative value?
Like say for example - numbers not real. If the purchasing power needed to buy one shirt in RU is $10, and $30 in US, than the max amount of ad profit would be in line with those profit margins.
So FB can charge more for a buy my shirt ad in the US, because the ad buyer can spend more in real $ terms
Is still the case actually, if they only consume non-imported goods they won't see the difference that much.
They have been outside of the global economy for decades during the cold war, they definitely know how to decouple. The problem is that this world is different than the previous one
Thing is that PPP is only for basic stuff (food, energy), and not tech stuff. A phone in Russia is not cheaper, and in fact all the imported goods are not cheaper.
Depends what phone. if you're importing it yes, is not cheaper. If is a local brand most likely yes.
Also what you say is not even true
> Elementary PPP calculation
The PPP estimation process begins with the participating economies collecting prices for items chosen from a common list of precisely defined items. These common lists include both regional items, priced in a specific region, as well as global items, priced in all ICP regions. These two sets of prices cover the whole range of final goods and services included in GDP: household consumption expenditures, government consumption expenditures, and gross capital formation expenditures.
Of course it contains global stuff but the weight of these are rather small in the basket of goods. First will come, basic necessities, housing, health, etc.
I am speculating, but I'd expect that Google's reach outside of USA is much larger than the Yandex's reach outside of Russia. In 2021 Alphabet had 46% of revenue originated from USA. If applied withing the country borders this brings the Google's GDP percentage number down to 0.393%. I am not sure what percentage is for Yandex in Russia but it doesn't look like Yandex is used outside of Russia much.
Russia is a sheep in wolf's clothing. They play a great PR game that makes them look like a superpower playing with the big boys, but their GDP isn't that big.
Better language support if Texas had its own language.
Note that people in Russia didn't switch from Google to Yandex: people in Russia switched from Yandex (and Rambler) to Google once Google has developed capabilities to search in Russian. Russian is flective language, so it's not trivial.
So the question is not really making 90% of people switch from Google but making 90% of people stay on Yandex. Inertia is a pretty big stumbling block.
There is also potential for local differentiation to be much stronger. Naver in South Korea manages to achieve this.
Take the rural / urban répartition of texas into account, rather than California's one ?
To put it bluntly, be ostensibly "more red" than google (even though you would end up giving most of the same result, because the state is way more purple than expected) ?
Major American tech companies are prevalent across much of the developed world. Yandex is used only in Russia which has a much lower population and individual purchasing power.
No, I only know and searched in english. I assume its a combinaton of not responding to take down requests and more crawling of illegal sites to begin with. But yeah you could find a pdf or stream of anything on yandex.
Make a local backup of your emails and try to move as many services to another email. Maybe you can go back to Yandex when all of this is over, but it's better to be safe rhan sorry
Indeed, but I have a 100 of services using that as a username. I have a custom domain address email but so many sites reject it as non valid I have to use the yandex one regularly. All that to avoid gmail, lol.
248 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 250 ms ] threadI got a kick out of the mention of “consumer sentiment”
All the way at the end, but there are other sources (Russian):
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/business/russia-sanctions...
Source: I own a Russian company.
Yandex is not a neighborhood cornershop company.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-war-...
Regardless: Arkady issues a press release saying, "This war is fucking Yandex up, we have no idea what's going to happen, earning in ₽ but investments in $ ain't great, and this surely isn't going to increase uptake of Yandex products abroad."
What precisely is that going to do besides land his ass in YaG-14/10?
1. Do not establish any contracts with government.
2. Do not participate in any governmental organizations or organizations created with any support from the government as a member.
3. Do not have any assets in Russia, that can not be instantly moved out.
4. Do not have any business with any person who might be business partners, friends, clients, family of anyone controlling or participating or in any way related to Russian government. Especially the military or the internal security.
5. Do not have any business with any legal entity involving anyone from number 4. If you have to, always demand full prepayment and mind number 3.
6. Do not incorporate any businesses in Russia, whose activity might contradict goals of persons from number 4 or entities from number 5.
7. Do not create any high earning businesses in Russia. Exceptions are businesses based on intellectual property (that can be sheltered outside), or on personal skills/knowledge (that can't be taken away).
8. Never rely that the courts will take your side even in clear cut cases. Also never rely on any number of qualified lawyers telling you what you are doing is legal in Russia. No matter what the law says, the court can at any time decide otherwise.
9. Never let your business do anything unusual, if it is offered by any entity from numbers 4 and 5, even if (and especially when) certain preferential treatment is offered.
10. Never end up in situation where an immediate and irreversible need to leave Russia is impossible, or complicated, or would have high cost, or would threaten other people. Even if you are precisely following the rules 1-9.
Yandex violates quite a few.
https://movchan.jonny.ru/publications/10-rules/
Certainly after the theft of vk from Durov everyone knew what the deal is.
1. Keep your servers abroad
2. Register your domains abroad
3. Incorporate abroad
4. Keep your assets abroad. In multiple places (in case one bans Russian transactions)
5. In multiple places! (other governments also suck quite often)
6. Keep your databases abroad
7. Keep logs of all actions and security tight (abroad)
8. Put assets and risks into many separate entities
9. Just skip 1-8 and give everything to Russian government upon incorporation - less headache
10. Move abroad
From 2010 http://blog.micromarketing.ru/advice/9-point-5-rules-fot-it-...
Now I’d wish they’d choose to go down in glory and spread the truth in every way they can, as long as they can. Because in four weeks they are gone no matter what. So far, it doesn’t look like it.
But this press release is just „not being stupid“.
You haven't done your homework.
Just because they have to toe the line of a goverment where they operate, should they stop serving the hundreds of millions of Russian people.
Isn't Twitter toeing the line of EU while censoring RT? Not that RT was publishing truth anyway but my point is companies toe the line on the basis of where they operate.
You don't expect Baidu to put the image of Tank man on their home page.
Should Apple employees have quit when the iPhones they designed were being manufactured by labour working in inhumane conditions? At least that was something that Apple could have easily controlled instead of trying to maximize the margins on their products.
Yes, yes, they absolutely should have done this. They are in the best position to force a change.
In fairness, they weren’t supporting a warring regime a month ago. I won’t say I would have worked at Yandex then but it wouldn’t have been the reflexive “no” that it is now.
Whether this excuses anything is not my point.
The person doing the telling… HAS TO MENTION THE WAR. The absurdity boggles the mind.
Not it's simple or I always do the right thing, but there is a right thing to do.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/media/2022/03/04/russia-media-ukr...
If it were possible to target sanctions directly at the war's cheerleaders, that would be great. It's not, and so sanctions harm Russians in the aggregate in the hopes of bringing down support in the aggregate.
What is unbelievable is the level of ignorance, hypocrisy and general lack of awareness in people who have free access to information.
Also wrong to assume they are on Putins side.
Russia != Putin
Seems pretty fast.
> In the event that such redemption right was triggered, we would be required to issue a notice within five calendar days informing the holders of the Notes of their redemption rights.
Given: > The Yandex group as a whole does not currently have sufficient resources to redeem the Notes in full
Yandex seems destined to bankruptcy and/or just walking away from the west.
Uncertain who the $1.25b are owed to.
> In the event that we were prevented from distributing additional funds from our Russian subsidiaries to our Dutch parent company, Yandex would not have sufficient resources to redeem a majority of the Notes
Better take the 50% haircut than the long game that gets you nothing.
There's a risk foreign currency held by Yandex might be sold to RUB per a Russian government order. I'd rather have shareholders cash out than have these assets fall into the hands of sanctioned entities.
theyre probably trading at a substantial discount!
If you're willing to condemn them and their families to 15 years of prison for "honour", it's the least you could do.
My point is that it's extremely easy to condemn people online, but 99% of Westerners have never even had a contrarian position, let alone a contrarian position against an authoritarian government.
Canadians had a hint of it during the Trucker Protest if they donated and had their banking cancelled, but that's been about as close as the West has been to this sort of regime.
I think this is the meat of it. Plenty of westerners have some level of contrarian positions, but we don't face real resistance for it and thus fall into the trap of thinking it's easy for everyone else.
Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, it's drastic and heavily coercive, and it's arguably collateral damage. But it's not like these Russian programmers are having their apartments shelled. This is war through other means, and war is hell.
Yandex picked the sides long ago, and now they are paying for being on the wrong side of the history. They aren't just complicit in censorship somehow, they are the censors themselves.
There are no 'good guys' in this war.
- Putin is a brutal dictator.
- America is pushing an amazing amount of propaganda in this war while simultaneously sending arms and funds to back a Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen targeting civilians.
- Ukraine has enlisted openly white supremacist neo-nazi's in their national guard to fight Russia in the east.
- Facebook even unbanned the Ukranian Azov Brigade [0] this week as long as they are fighting the Russians [1]
This is a war with no heroes and no winners, even though we have been taught to hate the 'others' to the point of targeting everyday Russian citizens, even those who oppose Putin's actions.
The truth is the first casualty in times of war. Propaganda works on all of us. The best thing we can do is realize that fact.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion
[1] https://theintercept.com/2022/02/24/ukraine-facebook-azov-ba...
pretty sure i seen some heroes.
That said, my question was about how certain you were that at least some of the heroic acts you read or watched, were not some form of propaganda? Call me cynical but as soon as the conflict started I started investigating claims from both sides and I learned that a significant amount of what we heard early in this invasion turned out to be false propaganda.
Examples:
- Figher Ghost Ace turns out to be a myth https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/03/02/ukraines-figh...
- Israel TV Channel shows Star Wars Tie Fighter crash landed in Ukraine https://www.nytimespost.com/israeli-tv-channel-runs-live-foo...
- According to Reuters/MSNBC/US Officials - There is no evidence Russia attacked nuclear reactors in Ukraine. https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-usa-nuclear-e...
There's tons of evidence to show the horrors of what Russia is doing in Ukraine, and stuff like the ghost of Kyiv is just a morale boost for Ukrainians and is utterly irrelevant.
So yes, you should of course be sceptical, but no amount of honest and fair scepticism will paint Russia's invasion in a significantly better light.
TL;DR: The war didn't start last week. It has been ongoing since 2014 and involves horrible acts from both sides.
No, they don't average out and unfortunately we may never know what the 'truth' is here.
I won't pretend to have all the answers, but I will say after watching the video, the situation appears to be much more complicated than it is being depicted on western media.
Curiosity Stream: Why Russia is invading Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE
Not that I can find. They seem to be focused on military strategy and geopolitics. Their other videos are about the reasons behind other modern military conflicts.
[Citation needed]
Also, it seems we both agree that invading another country and shelling civilians is also wrong, whether it is Russia or the US or others waging wars of aggression.
But nazis exist in many countries, and are given legitimacy in many countries. In Ukraine they're paramilitary, in Russia they're a mercenary force, in Germany they sit in parliament (AFD), in US they have obvious affiliation with the political party that is in power half the time (and have strong legal protections for both their speech and guns).
All of that can be used as excuses to forcefully "denazify" a country, like Russia is doing now, but none of that are actually good reasons to invade those countries or deny any of those countries the right for independence, not even close.
It's conceivable that in some situations, it seems likely to result in the less-evil outcome.
Case in point, suppose you had a neo-nazi unit offering to take out a Russian artillery battery that was shelling civilians. Do you refuse to truck them to that vicinity because you find them repugnant?
Life is full of hard choices; doubly so in war.
I am firmly of the position that no Nazi is a good Nazi. I am surprised to find myself in the minority here but based on the downvotes it is clear that my position is not a popular one.
Not really. The example I chose was already hypothetical, and not necessarily apropos to the current situation in Ukraine. The additional context you provided doesn't change my basic point that there's a calculation to be made.
> I am firmly of the position that no Nazi is a good Nazi.
I think we may be discussing two different things. I wasn't talking about the moral standing of individual Nazis. I was talking about the moral calculation of temporarily collaborating with them to possibly achieve a better outcome than not collaborating with them.
Extending the earlier example, suppose there's just one neo-nazi, who's offering to go on a suicide mission that will take out 1000 Russian artillery batteries, saving 500,000 Ukranians. And nobody but you would know, so the neo-nazi's actions couldn't even potentially inspire others.
Would you entertain the possibility that that is a good trade-off? If yes, then you might be agreeing that there's a calculation to be performed. If no, then I'd wonder why you'd find it preferable to let 500,000 Ukranians die. (I'm not calling you a moral monster. I'm just trying to lay things out that shows there's an actual dilemma.)
It's not even worth mentioning.
Ps. Wagner group is > 6000.
Ps2. Every country has some dumbass neonazi's somewhere.
How many other countries (that the West defends) can claim to have openly employed neo-Nazis officially by the Government for as long as Ukraine?
I am old enough to remember when an entire Canadian trucker convoy protest movement was smeared as Nazis because 1 protester held 1 nazi flag on the 1st day of a 24 day protest before being asked to leave by other protesters.
Checks notes - That was only a couple weeks ago.
Now it seems that so many are willing to look the other way or even apologize for employing literal Nazis with guns simply because these Nazis are fighting for the ‘right’ side.
For the record, it is OK to support Ukraine’s right to defend itself, while also denouncing the decision to employ Nazis.
A few weeks ago, I would have expected nothing less from HN. Suddenly it seems the rules have changed?
Shaking my head, I don’t understand.
If you are a male in Ukraine, you are essentially enlisted at this point. Heck, prisoners are being released to fight.
While they continue to fight for the sovereignty of a nation headed by a Jewish president I can see how they could be useful. Soldiers often aren't nice people. Most countries have at least a few hundred of these types of neo-Nazis.
Please share examples if you have them. It should be easy if, as you say “most countries have at least a few hundred.”
I’m struggling to understand how I am the minority here calling out what I always thought was a widely agreed principle on HN i.e. Nazis = bad.
Nazis are not the good guys and fighting alongside Nazis, even if convenient, is wrong. A few weeks ago this statement would have been so obvious as to be redundant on HN.
What if we win the war but lose our moral compass?
How do you explain to your kids that Nazis are bad except sometimes they are useful so not always bad?
That law that you mention requires only to publish news from officially registered media. At that moment there were officially registered not-pro-Putin media that could be used as a source (for example, covering anti-government protests, trial on Navalny and so on), but Yandex preferred to tune the algorithm so that it chooses news from pro-Putin media for the homepage that is seen by millions of people.
Yandex chose to become a propaganda outlet. Some of the news that they re-publish from propaganda media are very low quality and, I think, even violate Yandex's own rules. If you understand Russian, read this headline for example: [1]. For those, who don't understand Russian, the headline contains the word "shit" while describing (with rejoice) how Lyubov Sobol was denied to take part in Moscow State Duma elections. There was no law requiring Yandex to accept such publications for their news aggregator, but they accepted it.
[1] https://newssearch.yandex.ru/news/search?text=%D0%B1%D0%BB%D...
Rukipedia even has a section on incidents suggesting both manual fiddling with the YN output and the government's stuffing of it: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Яндекс.Новости#Критика
As for the example you cite: if it was found just in the ‘news search’, then it's possibly not from a source ‘certified’ for appearing in the main news feed—from what I've read, it seems that the search includes many more sources than the feed, and is possibly not regulated by that law.
[1] https://yandex.ru/news/smi?name=%D0%9C%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%...
[2] https://yandex.ru/support/news/info-for-mass-media.html
I use yandex when I don't want censored results - google when I want to know something like "location of X in videogame Y"
Google cannot censor. By definition. Neither can Yandex. Both can be censored however, although only the latter is.
The Russian government can & does censor, including, starting tomorrow, 15-year jail-sentences for „misleading statements“ about you-know-what.
https://www.google.com/search?q=censor%20definition
> examine (a book, movie, etc.) officially and suppress unacceptable parts of it.
https://www.google.com/search?q=officially
> with the authority of the government or other organization
I would call it censorship. But in those examples you listed, I would attribute it to the government and not the company. Because by removing those elements, they are not "exercising their rights to do so", they are "complying with local laws and regulations by doing so".
For a specific example: in Russia, "propaganda of homosexualty" (which includes something as trivial as explicitly acknowledging that one of the main characters is attracted to a person, or people in general, of the same sex) is against the law and is heavily punished.
So in reality, those companies only have two options: sell their product with those elements removed for that specific market or become unable to legally sell their product in that market at all.
Is it censorship? I would argue "yes", but I wouldn't say that the censorship is done by the company. If that action was required in order to be in compliance with local laws and regulations, I would call it for what it actually is - government censorship. After all, they are the ones making those laws and regulations that decide what is allowed and what needs to be removed.
It is true that it is impossible for Google to violate the 1st Amendment (unless they were nationalized first).
They're a private company. They can do whatever they want within the limits of the law. And the law doesn't say anything about not publishing something. Which can be done for purposes of censorship.
They're not a publisher. You have zero ability to post anything to Google, so there is nobody to be censored. They're an aggregator, and any aggregator can display whatever information they want.
does yandex show you putin's mansion?
https://tinyurl.com/ttxvuvu4
But I've cut a lot of the tracking crap out for you:
https://yandex.com/maps/org/rezidentsiya_na_myse_idokopas/84...
I assume you don't know there's a war in Ukraine happening right now then. Just take a look at the front page of https://yandex.com/news. It's like a different reality.
Google for things censored in Russia.
Calling censorship take downs due to copyright infringement and alikes seems like a stretch.
There's a difference between things taken down due to the political agenda of the government (Russia), and things taken down because they violate someone else's rights (West).
Who's right's were violated?
Political agenda's censor both.
They do payments and payment processing (think paypal and square and more combined)
They do cloud services (think a mix of GCP and AWS) for business.
They do personal storage (think dropbox/gdrive) and email, and more.
among more.
Edit: see I’m being downvoted, probably because “that would never happen” - I think it’s very realistic that they will either shut down the internet domestically or they’ll cut all non-domestic routing - they want/need information control, and the internet is porous. If dissent continues in Russia, they will do it.
Ref: https://www.reuters.com/technology/russia-disconnected-globa...
The Ruble has lost ~10% of it's value since then = ~$379M today.
So they've "only" lost $78M - not $250M.
- Son, why do you need 25 RUB for some ice cream? 30 RUB is a lot of money! Before you ask me for 35 RUB, think about how long I have to work for 40 RUB!
I don’t think people realize how hard these sanctions will hit over the next months. There is not going to be a modern Russia left.
True that there were lots of discussion for Chinese business getting suspended but was not the case for Russian till the start of this war (also their headquarter seems to be in the Netherlands)
Not sure to be honest, you might argue that their headquarter is in Netherlands but remain pretty known to anyone that they operate in Russia.
Not so easy to see. Their CEO must have a big headache these days
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/russia-yandex-governance-idU...
The Dutch part of Yandex may be bankrupted but the Russian part (with most of the assets) surely can continue.
Talk about easy money and a massively distorted interest rates.
*looses $1,000,000,000
edit: one extra zero
It seems very odd to me that (1) NASDAQ can halt trading on any stock for any reason and (2) Yandex has promised its bondholders large considerations – enough to bankrupt the company – should their stock be suspended for more than 5 consecutive days. Even if you disregard the current crisis, how does a provision like 2 make sense for any company, considering 1? Was it just overconfidence? Or negligence?
Because I can see lots of Russian entities still based in Russia
Eg: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspersky_Lab
Russia is infamous for pressing businessmen to give up their assets. Evgeny Chichvarkin and Mikhail Khodorkovsky are quite interesting examples (check them out on wikipedia).
In Russia we say "the 1st rule of making business in Russia is to not host your business in Russia". Yandex and jetbrains are a good example of this rule! I really doubt that tax evasion was the primary goal of hosting Yandex's HQ in Netherlands
Source?
https://listingcenter.nasdaq.com/rulebook/nasdaq/rules/nasda...
Aside from that sometimes there are also political moves that might affect listing/delisting.
I wouldn't say that they've promised large considerations. They've promised to redeem the bonds. If you bought the bonds assuming you'd convert them into stock and see a big gain, getting 0.75% interest on your money is really disappointing. I think it's also important to remember that before the Ruble fell off a cliff, they had around $1.25B in cash on hand.
They only promised bondholders "if we get delisted and therefore these aren't convertible bonds anymore (since we aren't trading), we'll redeem them from you at face value plus the 0.75% interest."
I'd also note that this feels like a release for regulatory requirements. I don't think Yandex expects all its investors to redeem their bonds. They're stating the risks even if the probability isn't high. I'm sure they're required to.
> how does a provision like 2 make sense for any company
The bonds carry almost no interest (just 0.75%) so Yandex was trading the convertibility of it into stock as a key selling point. If it isn't trading, then that convertibility isn't really something an investor can bank on.
You can see that other companies have some similar things around delisting events: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001822829/000119312..., http://www.hcsurgicalspecialists.com/images/PDF/29072019-HCS...
I'd also note that the terms sheet from Yandex seems a bit more generous than their press release indicates. It's not just being beholden to the NASDAQ since they do seem to offer up the NYSE as an alternative remedy. It also seems like there's the possibility for the shares to be "admitted to trading and/or listing on another internationally recognised, regularly operating and regulated stock exchange," but given that they are trading on other exchanges that doesn't seem to cover it (it's really hard to parse the language around it, try reading the "delisting event" criteria https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1513845/000110465920...).
Frankly, some things are hard to prepare for - and preparing for the worst can put you in a bad position in the 99% of cases that aren't the worst. Should they have issued a bond at 8% interest rather than the convertible bonds at 0.75% interest? In the 99% of cases where Russia doesn't cause the world to go against it, that's potentially a huge waste of money that lets competitors get an opening against you. The NASDAQ isn't just suspending trading on companies on a whim. They have a compelling business interest to seem reliable to companies. The NYSE and NASDAQ are both reviewing new US sanctions to see how they'd fit in (https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/russia-ukraine-latest-news-...).
It's actually kinda shocking that the world is caring about this invasion. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and no one really cared. Russia invaded Ukraine (Crimea) in 2014 and no one really cared. Russia had already started things rolling in Eastern Ukraine (Donetsk) a year ago and no one really cared. It's probably coming as a huge shock to a lot ...
That's not true. International payments with cards issued by non-sanctioned banks continue to work.
The point is: the biggest reason for Netflix and co. is being unable to get paid through the channels people are using. The fact that you can if you're savvy was never the sort of hoops companies want to require their customers to jump through.
Please don't speak on the accuracy of comments when clearly you have no idea yourself.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
I don't imagine Russia would accept losing such a big part of their planned Russian firewall and be stuck with only Google/Bing as search engines.
Well, if I understand its powers right then now the government can use it to transfer the whole company to its buddies.
*ring ring*
Margin Calling
Are my expectations of earnings for large global tech companies unrealistic, is this a currency valuation issue, or something else? This was very surprising to me.
Google search has about 2/3rds of what yandex has in Russia:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1094920/leading-search-e...
They'll most probably block it, too, I'll give it a day or two. It also depends how the negotiations with the Ukrainian side go over the weekend.
Most of that is natural resources sounds like they have a pretty small consumer economy for a country that huge.
Google says google's annual rev is 256.7b while US gdp is 20.94t.
So is this math correct? Yandex rev as % of gdp 5bb/1.48tt = .337%, google rev as % of gdp 256bb/20.94tt = .855%
I might have guessed even less given how much more tech companies make even between a US consumer and even somewhere like Europe. Fb is $48/15 in one quarter, I couldn't find one quickly for google
https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2021/FB...
In that regards Russia is not that bad: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PP...
But of course this affect the way you see at numbers on an absolute value
But I think on the other hand also still shows the relative value?
Like say for example - numbers not real. If the purchasing power needed to buy one shirt in RU is $10, and $30 in US, than the max amount of ad profit would be in line with those profit margins.
So FB can charge more for a buy my shirt ad in the US, because the ad buyer can spend more in real $ terms
But depends, if you use goods and services from foreign countries that affect also that aspect.
This is how is calculated btw:
https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/icp/brief/methodology-...
Was not that bad.
They have been outside of the global economy for decades during the cold war, they definitely know how to decouple. The problem is that this world is different than the previous one
Also what you say is not even true
> Elementary PPP calculation The PPP estimation process begins with the participating economies collecting prices for items chosen from a common list of precisely defined items. These common lists include both regional items, priced in a specific region, as well as global items, priced in all ICP regions. These two sets of prices cover the whole range of final goods and services included in GDP: household consumption expenditures, government consumption expenditures, and gross capital formation expenditures.
https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/icp/brief/methodology-...
Imagine if you were the search engine for Texas. It’d be a nice business, but not massive.
Note that people in Russia didn't switch from Google to Yandex: people in Russia switched from Yandex (and Rambler) to Google once Google has developed capabilities to search in Russian. Russian is flective language, so it's not trivial.
So the question is not really making 90% of people switch from Google but making 90% of people stay on Yandex. Inertia is a pretty big stumbling block.
There is also potential for local differentiation to be much stronger. Naver in South Korea manages to achieve this.
Take the rural / urban répartition of texas into account, rather than California's one ?
To put it bluntly, be ostensibly "more red" than google (even though you would end up giving most of the same result, because the state is way more purple than expected) ?
Obviously there are worse things to worry about, but it's an unintended consequences of the situation.