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The sign outside the NASDAQ Market site is seen in this Aug. 19, 2004 file photo taken in New York. The Wall Street Journal reported on its website late Friday Feb. 4, 2011 that federal investigators are trying to identify the hackers that penetrated the market's computer network multiple times during the past year.Kathy Willens/AP

Yandex, Russia's most popular Internet search engine, Monday filed to raise up to $1.1-billion (U.S.) in an initial public offering that would take advantage of demand for Internet stocks coming to U.S. exchanges.

The company's Dutch parent, Yandex NV, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Monday for an IPO of 52.2 million Class A shares to be sold at $20 to $22 each.

The filing came just hours after LinkedIn, a social networking site for business professionals, released details of its IPO plan, expecting to raise up to $274.4-million.

Yandex's IPO comes just six months after a $1-billion London float by Russian Internet investing company Mail.ru Group and days after the shares of Renren Inc , one of China's biggest social networking companies, rose nearly 30 per cent in their debut on the New York Stock Exchange after raising $743.4-million.

Yandex.ru, launched in 1997, generated 64 per cent of all search traffic in Russia last year, according to the filing.

Apart from Mail.ru, which owns a 2.38 per cent stake in social networking giant Facebook, the list of Yandex's principal rivals is topped by global search engine giant Google . Google introduced a Russian-language search engine in 2001 and opened its first Russian office in 2006, but it still trails Yandex in Russia with about 22 per cent of market share, Yandex said in the filing, citing statistics from another Russian Internet company, Liveinternet.ru.

In the commonly extensive list of risk factors involved in investing in the IPO, Yandex warned it may be subject to "aggressive application of contradictory or ambiguous laws or regulations," including tax regulations and license requirements. It also said it may be required to do a dual listing in Russia and face aggressive takeover efforts by "well-funded, well-connected financial groups and so-called 'oligarchs,"' which it may not be able to thwart.

Yandex, whose U.S. base is in Palo Alto, California, plans to use IPO proceeds to invest in technology infrastructure, especially new servers and data centers, and for possible acquisitions of or investments in technologies, teams and businesses.

Founders Arkady Volozh and Ilya Segalovich plan to sell 4.1 million and 820,000 shares, respectively, decreasing their stakes slightly to 20 per cent and 4 per cent. Yandex's biggest shareholder, Baring Vostok Private Equity Funds, plans to sell 6.2 million shares, but its total voting power would actually increase by roughly 1 percentage point to 26 per cent.

The search engine operator plans to list its shares on the Nasdaq under the symbol "YNDX."

Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs are leading underwriters on the offering.

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