Uber to accelerate sale of Yandex taxi joint venture

[NEW YORK] Uber Technologies is speeding up the sale of its stake in a taxi joint-venture with Russian Internet search company Yandex.

The ride-hailing giant will also remove Uber executives from the board of Yandex.Taxi, it said in a statement Monday (Feb 28). San Francisco-based Uber, which doesn’t hold any shares of the publicly traded Yandex entity, has a 29 per cent stake in the venture that was valued at about US$800 million at the end of 2021.

In August, Yandex bought out Uber’s interest in several joint ventures including Yandex.Eats, Yandex.Lavka and Yandex.Delivery. The restructuring also whittled down Uber’s shares in MLU, the companies’ mobility-focused venture that includes the taxi, car-sharing and scooter rental businesses.

Uber said a single non-executive representative will help to oversee the remaining divestiture.

Last week, Uber paused operations in the 9 cities where it operates in Ukraine.

“In light of recent events, we are actively looking for opportunities to accelerate the sale of our remaining holdings and, in the meantime, will remove our executives from the board of the joint venture,” said Uber spokesman Noah Edwardsen. Yandex is not a state-owned entity and is not currently subject to sanctions, he added.

Uber merged its operations in Russia and neighbouring countries with Yandex in a deal that closed in February 2018 and valued the unit at US$3.8 billion. BLOOMBERG