* Sberbank agrees to buy holding stake in Mail.ru
* Deal would see Sberbank acquire 20.3% of Mail.ru voting
rights
* Mail.ru shares up 1.9% on the day
(Adds detail and graphics, updates ownership information)
By Alexander Marrow and Nadezhda Tsydenova
MOSCOW, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Sberbank has agreed to
buy Gazprombank's holding stake in internet company
Mail.ru as Russia's largest lender continues its
transformation under Chief Executive German Gref into a
banking-to-online services company.
Under the deal Sberbank will buy a 35% stake in MF
Technologies, which owns 58.9% of Mail.ru's voting rights, from
Gazprombank, a state-owned financial group.
MF Technologies was set up by Megafon,
Gazprombank, Rostec and USM holdings in 2018 and holds a 5.2%
stake in Mail.ru Group, while controlling a majority
of its voting rights.
Gazprombank did not respond to Reuters' request for comment.
Mail.ru's chief executive, Boris Dobrodeyev, said that the
company welcomed the change to deepen ties with Sberbank, adding
that he saw scope for wider cooperation.
The move would expand Sberbank's investments in the internet
space and may put pressure on Yandex, Russia's largest
internet company and Mail.ru rival.
But with investments in Yandex projects Yandex.Dengi,
Yandex.Money and e-commerce venture Yandex.Market, Sberbank
could find itself caught between the two industry leaders.
Sberbank is one of several Russian banks, including VTB Bank
and TCS Group, to have invested in internet
and telecom services as corporate demand for their traditional
services slows.
The deal would give Sberbank 1.82% ownership of Mail.ru and
20.3% of the voting rights, according to Reuters calculations.
In 2018, USM holdings and Megafon transferred control of
their 54% voting stake in MF Technologies to Mail.ru's
management, giving CEO Boris Dobrodeyev and his team a 31.8%
voting share.
In July, Mail.ru and Sberbank announced that they would
invest up to 64 million roubles ($1 million) in a new joint
venture for taxi services and food, providing competition for
Yandex, whose Yandex.Taxi service dominates Russia's
ride-hailing market.
Alfa Bank said it expected Mail.ru to benefit from the deal,
saying its cooperation with Sberbank on digital projects and
close ties at the ownership level would help to attract
ambitious investment.
"Sberbank as a long-term strategic partner will provide
access to significant amounts of funding for new projects at the
venture stage of development," said Alfa Bank in a note.
For Yandex, however, the move could prove to have negative
consequences, according to Alfa Bank, with Sberbank cooperation
in its Yandex.Market joint venture now looking more vulnerable.
Mail.ru operates email services, as well as Russian social
media websites VKontakte and Odnoklassniki. In 2016, it
purchased food delivery service Delivery Club, which is now
co-owned by Sberbank as part of the companies' joint venture.
The group's shares were up 1.9% on the day, rising for the
eighth consecutive session.
A draft law that proposed limiting foreign shareholding in
Russian internet firms at 20%, later revised to 50%, hit
Mail.ru's share price this month, with the company's stock
falling to its lowest since January 2017 on Oct. 18.
The share price has rebounded more than 20% since reaching
that mark.
($1 = 63.8877 roubles)
(Reporting by Andrey Kuzmin, Nadezhda Tsydenova and Tatiana
Voronova; writing by Alexander Marrow; editing by Jason Neely
and Louise Heavens)