Yesterday Sberbank, the state-controlled financial giant, and LSE-listed Mail.Ru Group signed binding agreements concerning their JV partnership in the fields of food delivery and taxi hailing.
- The deal puts Mail.Ru’s Delivery Club and CitiMobil businesses, plus Sberbank’s own FoodPlex arm into a single joint venture.
- The two partners will invest “up to 64.6 billion rubles” (around $1 billion at the current exchange rate) in their joint venture, the post-money valuation of which will “exceed 100 billion rubles” ($1.6 billion).
- The partners will hold equal stakes in the JV with up to 10% of the shares allocated for employees through a stock-option mechanism.
The deal, however, is still pending approval from the Russian antimonopoly authorities.
Yesterday’s announcement includes a new element: after three years, Sberbank will have the option to exchange its stake in the JV for a 20% stake in Mail.ru Group itself. In such case, Sberbank will increase its economic share of the group to 22% and 29% in terms of voting rights.
Sberbank is already committed to control a 2% economic share via the acquisition of an 11 billion ruble ($177 million) stake in one of Mail.Ru’s investors, MF Technologies. The companies announced yesterday they signed a binding agreement on this transaction, following announcements made in late October.
“Strategic cooperation”
Sberbank and Mail.Ru Group also announced a “strategic cooperation … to boost the development of digital economy and AI powered products in Russia.” Considering their complementarity and potential synergies, the two companies consider joint developments in such fields as:
- Advertising products for small and medium-sized enterprises;
- Unique joint propositions for Mail.Ru Group and Sberbank clients and users;
- Sharing of technological development expertise and new complex solutions;
- Joint strategic projects to boost parties’ further development.
A new step away from Yandex
The tie-up is the latest move in Sberbank’s pivot towards Mail.ru Group, which many perceive as a step away from its top competitor, Russia’s most valuable tech company, Yandex. According to media reports, the relationship between the two companies weakened after Yandex co-founder and main shareholder Arkady Volozh declined Sberbank’s pressing offer to buy a controlling stake in the company.
In a corporate shake-up announced yesterday, Sberbank is set to relinquish its so-called “golden share” in Yandex, while Yandex also refused to say whether Sberbank CEO German Gref would retain his seat on its board of directors when it comes up for renewal next June.
Yandex and Sberbank are still tied, however, through two joint ventures: Yandex.Money, a market leader in electronic payment services, and the Yandex.Market group of companies, which operates e-commerce marketplaces (see EWDN’s e-commerce report).
