The price reflects a 50% discount that Moscow imposes on companies from “unfriendly” countries like the Netherlands as a condition of exiting business in Russia, according to a statement Monday from Nasdaq-exchange listed Yandex NV.
Investing in Russia sounds like a bad idea. A kleptocracy is not going to protect foreign investments. Russian business and tech is now DOA, perhaps Ukraine will happily take up the mantle of Eastern Europe's tech capitol once their invaders are expelled.
Not Gazprom, those wankers. Lukoil. Beacon of . . y'know . . freedom or some shit. When the state-managed privately-run petroleum conglomerate buys your country's main search engine, you know it's a bad day.
Fascinating watching companies who chose to operate in places like Russia and China now pay the price for that decision. Maybe chasing pots of gold by operating businesses in places where the law is a mere suggestion that can be overridden at the whim of a dictator isn’t such a great idea after all.
Maybe chasing pots of gold by operating businesses in places where the law is a mere suggestion that can be overridden at the whim of a dictator isn’t such a great idea after all.
Probably not the conclusion they’ll arrive at; the correct people already got rich off this bullshit.
Russia was a very different country when Yandex started out. For as terrible as things were in the '90s for most Russians, there was a newfound sense of freedom for the first time in Russian history, accompanied by a cultural explosion and a similarly vibrant startup culture.
China experienced a brief period of far more restrictive, but still previously unheard of freedom when the tech companies that now dominate its part of the Internet started out. It didn't last, Xi quickly killed it off once he took the throne, but the country is still benefiting from these small handful of years, not realizing quite yet what they have lost.
Are you expecting companies that were created during such times to just shut down once their countries slide back into totalitarianism?
I expect them to do what Google did: see the way the winds are blowing and get out before their assets are seized or their leadership disappeared. It’s not like these are sudden shifts. The decline of both states toward increasing totalitarianism has been happening for at least 15 years.
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