Recipe for Yandex's Successful IPO: Genius, Nerve, Patience
(Reuters) - Take a helping of Russian genius, add a portion of risk appetite and stir in a lot of patience, and you have the recipe for the resounding success of search engine Yandex's (Nasdaq: YNDX) U.S. stock market float. The Nasdaq listing values Russia's leading internet search engine at $8 billion, an eye-popping 500 times its worth when private equity investors bought into the company in 2000. (See details of IPO here.) That year the business, founded in 1997 by mathematician Arkady Volozh and geophysicist Ilya Segalovich, had revenues of just $72,000 and lost $2 million. Eyeing a long-term prospect, Yelena Ivashentseva of private equity fund Baring Vostok Capital Partners put together an investor group that bought a 36 percent stake in Yandex for just over
