Russian Internet company Yandex and the country’s biggest consumer bank Sberbank said yesterday they were teaming up to create a new major player in the area of e-commerce.
Under the terms of the agreement, which is still non-binding at this stage, Sberbank will invest about $500m in Yandex’s internet marketplace platform. The investment would effectively give Sberbank 50 percent of the new company, valued at about $1bn. Yandex said it would be able to “develop simple and secure payment solutions on the Yandex.Market platform” using Sberbank’s banking and payments infrastructure.