Nasdaq has stopped trading shares of companies based in Russia. Nexters also got banned for some reason (UPDATED)

Yesterday it became known that the US stock exchange Nasdaq temporarily withdrew shares of five companies from trading in connection with US sanctions against Russia. Nexters, officially based in Cyprus, was also blocked. UPDATED: The company says that Nexters is not subject to sanctions.

Updated: We have received a comment on the situation from Nexters.

“Nexters continues to operate in the same mode. We continue to develop, operate and support games. At the moment we are communicating with the exchange. As far as we know, our company is not subject to sanctions or any restrictions. Nexters is an international company that is managed from its head office in the European Union (Limassol, Cyprus). More than half of the revenue comes from the US and European markets. We look forward to a speedy resolution of this situation.”

A number of publications, including Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, reported on the suspension of the sale of shares.

The reason is the expectation of new sanctions against Russia by the United States due to (…) [the word is banned by the Russian authorities] in Ukraine.

Four Russian companies were blocked — HeadHunter, Ozon, Qiwi and Yandex. Nasdaq also paused work with Nexters shares.

The latter is officially Cypriot. Its head office is located in Limassol. However, the company has Russian roots. Both of its founders — Boris Herzovsky and Andrey Fadeev — used to live in Moscow.

Note that, for example, G5 Games, which is also founded by a native of Russia and is also listed on Nasdaq, does not experience any blocking.

Updated: Initially we offered our own version of why this could happen. But later they decided to remove it.