Hindered and delisted Global Depositary Receipts (GDRs) (2024) of Russia-related companies: Is there a difference?
Many clients ask us about the situation with the GDRs of the Russia-related companies – Were they delisted? Is trading possible? Can they be sold?
The answer is usually negative, since the majority of stock exchanges hindered these securities in 2022-2023. However, not all of them are completely delisted, which means that in theory for some of them trading can still be resumed. Let’s analyze 2 different cases – OZON and Yandex N.V.:
- Ozon delisted its GDRs on NASDAQ in 2023 – it was impossible to trade these GDRs for a long time and finally they were delisted.
At the same time, Ozon securities have significantly increased in price on the Moscow Exchange over the last year. Despite the fact that Ozon has not been redomiciled yet, we would like to recommend considering the forced conversion option in order to preserve investments in these securities or even increase them in future by selling the converted shares (when it is possible), as there is a high probability that forced conversion of Ozon will start at some point.
- Yandex did not delist its GDRs and its GDR program remained active, but trading in these GDRs is still hindered by NASDAQ.
In order to change this situation Yandex's business was split into a Russian part (the most valuable assets were transferred to the Russian legal entity MKPAO Yandex) and a foreign part (the current legal entity Yandex N.V. from the Netherlands, which is about to go under the new brand "Nebius Group"), but trading remains hindered.
We continue monitoring these GDRs and hope that the forced conversion will be initiated for them.