This week details of Yandex's terms of IPO resurfaced everywhere. Though the company refused to comment, it is now clear that Yandex would be enlisted on NASDAQ early this summer and is estimated to raise up to $1.148M by offering around 52.2M shares (or 16% of total issued shares after IPO) at a price of between $20-$22 per share, Quintura reports. Yandex's market value is estimated to be around $7 billion, which is $1 billion more than Mail.ru Group's valuation. However, exact pricing figures would be revealed later this month.

Yandex will issue 15.4M new shares to raise over $300M. That would slightly diminish founders' stake in the company to around 20% for Arkady Volozh and 4% for Ilya Segalovich, Moscow Times reports. Raised money would be invested into new servers and data centers as well as possible acquisitions in Russia and abroad.

In previous years Yandex bought majority stakes in services like Face.com (facial recognition technology from Israel), GIS Technology (Russian mapping service), Mediaselling (Moscow-based display ad agency), SMIlink (Russian traffic information service) and PayCash. As a result Yandex built their own maps, real-time traffic measuring technology and online payments service, all of which contributed to the company's ever-growing popularity and success.

Earlier this year Yandex reported a 43% increase in revenue, which amounted to $410M this February. However, their revenue was now reported to be a mighty $494M for the twelve months ending in March 31, 2011. Almost 90% of the money comes from contextual advertising.

Among the numerous risks associated with filing for IPO Yandex emphasized that it might face 'aggressive application of contradictory or ambiguous laws or regulations' or appropriation from 'well-funded, well-connected financial groups and so-called 'oligarchs' from Russia.

Though a lot of reporters found the statement over-dramatized, the threat is likely to be quite real. Though it might also end up being a far-fetched possibility that never comes true. The kind of controversy said threats would create in global markets is hardly the kind of publicity Russia needs on the brink of establishing itself as an Internet-friendly state with its  own Silicon Valley (Skolkovo).