Yandex euphoria

Everyone in Russia is cheering the success of Yandex, which raised $1.3 billion in an IPO earlier this week, making it the biggest tech offering since Google went public in 2004.

Friends who work at investment funds here have been emailing me just to say how everyone’s in a good mood as a result (otherwise they're still dealing with the pessissmitic hangover left by the financial crisis and souring indexes thanks to political uncertainty). The Moscow Times ran an op-ed touting “A Genuine Success Story Made in Russia.”

The euphoria (somewhat tempered by Yandex’s slide on the second day of trading) is justified. Russian success stories are few and far between. More often we hear about big deals disastrously falling apart (witness BP and Rosneft) or small businesses coming under fire (the BBC ran a good example today).