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Alisher Usmanov, the owner of Kommersant publishing house and the founder of Metalloinvest holding is emerging as top investor in the internet arena of Russia. According to a report, he is currently in negotiation with Russia’s leading search engine ‘Yandex’, regarding the acquisition of its stake upto 10%-20%.

Company’s expected valuation is around $5 billion so the stake would probably be valued around $1 billion. Search engine’s IPO is being managed by the investment banks which includes Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Renaissance Capital.

Last year company’s revenues were $167 million. Though Google is popular in most parts of the world but in Russia, its a different story. In the 1st quarter of the current year, Yandex contained around 54% of the overall search traffic followed by Google 19% and Rambler 14%. Overall Yandex is ranked the 3rd best search property in Europe having 528 million monthly searches.

Earlier Alisher Usmanov acquired stakes in Digital Sky Technologies (DST) and SUP.