Yandex Names Nilesh Lakhani as Chief Financial Officer

Moscow, Russia, December 18, 2007. Yandex, Russia’s most popular search engine, announced today that Nilesh Lakhani has been named the company’s chief financial officer.

“Nilesh has a tremendous amount of experience in corporate finance with leading media, technology and Internet companies,” said Arkady Volozh, Yandex co-founder and CEO. “We are pleased that we have been able to attract a CFO of his caliber and believe that this is further proof of the company’s maturity and growth potential.”

“It is a privilege to be joining Arkady Volozh and his team at Yandex at this exciting stage in the company’s development,” said Nilesh Lakhani. “Yandex is the leading Russian Internet search engine operating in one of the world’s fastest growing online advertising markets. I look forward to contributing to the company’s impressive growth and profitability and helping to capitalize on its tremendous market potential.”

Prior to joining Yandex, Lakhani served as chief financial officer of CTC Media Inc, a leading Russian independent TV broadcaster that trades on the NASDAQ. Before CTC Media, Lakhani was vice president of global operations at Electronic Arts, a leading publisher of video games. In addition, Lakhani also served as chief financial officer of Pogo.com, an online entertainment company that was subsequently acquired by Electronic Arts. Lakhani also spent several years with GE Capital where he was responsible for financing mergers and acqusitions. He holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Manchester, England and an M.B.A in Finance from the University of San Francisco, where he received the Scholastic Excellence Award.

Yandex is a leading Internet portal and search engine in Russia with approximately 6 million unique visitors per day. In addition to search, the company provides users with other specialized services including blog hosting, photo and email hosting, news aggregation service, maps, a comparison shopping system, an online payment system and social networking. Yandex also supports Yandex.WiFi, the largest free hotspot network in Russia. To find out more about Yandex, please visit: http://company.yandex.com/.

Contact:
Media Relations
Vladimir Isaev, Ochir Mandzhikov
Phone: +7 495 739-7000
E-mail: pr@yandex-team.com