Rybalkin, Gortsunyan, Dyakin & Partners law firm (RGD) acted as a legal advisor to Yandex in a complex acquisition transaction of the Delivery Club service from VK and the sale of Zen and News services to VK.

The binding agreement, under which Yandex acquires the Delivery Club, and VK acquires both – Zen and News services, was signed by the companies in the end of August. The transaction was closed in the first half of September after receiving all the required governmental approvals and fulfilling other closing conditions by both parties. The RGD team advised Yandex at all stages of the transaction, conducting due diligence of the acquired asset and preparing transaction documentation for signing.

The deal is considered to be strategic for both parties. According to the press release issued by Yandex, Delivery Club and Yandex.Food will be transferred to the shared technological platform. This allows to increase the density of orders per square kilometre. At the same this allows couriers to handle more deliveries within the designated area and earn more accordingly. As a result, users could choose restaurants from the expanded list and receive their orders faster.

The new main page – ya.ru – becomes the main page and the primary entry point to Search, Mail and other Yandex Services.

RGD’s co-founding partner and Head of Corporate Practice Suren Gortsunyan supervised the work on the project. The project team included partners Sergey Komolov and Oleg Isaev, counsels Ilya Zotkin and Maria Samartseva, senior associate Marina Zakharova, and associates Daniil Ivanov and Danil Karimov.

“We are glad to partner with Yandex and participate in one of the most important transactions in IT and FoodTech. These services are designed to improve the environment around us, and we hope this transaction will give the right impetus for a new giant leap of the food delivery market, which in turn will affect the quality of the service itself, the growth of users and the creation of equal conditions for all participants”, - said Suren Gortsunyan, co-founding partner of Rybalkin, Gortsunyan, Dyakin and Partners law firm.