Following the footsteps of its fellow Russian internet giant Mail.ru, Yandex, Russia’s search engine leader is considering to float its Initial Public Offer during first half of year 2011. The IPO of Mail.ru was a good success and it managed to raise around 1 billion by posing approx 32.3 million shares at $27.7 per share. Besides this IPO, the internet giant is also trying to make some acquisitions and play a significant role into the globalizing economy.

Yandex is expected to raise $1.56 billion from this IPO with listing in London or NASDAQ. Surprisingly, Yandex spokespersons are still denying to give any information about the issue.

“As a growing company, we continually evaluate various financing and strategic alternatives, but it is our policy not to comment on our plans in this regard”, said a Yandex spokesperson.

It might be because the company planned an issue earlier in 2008 also, but indefinitely postponed the plan due to global economic turmoil prevailing that time. The floating of this IPO will definitely be significant as the Russian technology scene is growing rapidly, and attracting a lot of financial gains & interest. With this issue, they’ll want to be investing more, making acquisitions and growing on a global scale .

To demonstrate the same, this Initial Public Offering by Mail.ru has made it Europe’s largest listed internet business, as reported by a Reuters report. The company is already flourishing in Japanese and Chinese markets and the floating of this issue clearly reflects its interest in US market.

Russia seems particularly interested in the social sector, as advertising is reaping the rewards from its investments these past few years.  Yandex specializes in contextual advertising, which will be a good move for the company in terms of global expansion.

Another indicative development in the industry is investment in Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, by Digital Sky Technologies (DST), a Russian internet company. Moreover, it manages to get a whopping investment of $388 million from Myraid International Holdings and $300 million from Tencent, Chinese internet company.