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The number of deals by foreigners involving Russian business assets fell in the first half of 2026, according to a report by the information agency AK&M, as reported by Frank Media.

In the reporting period there were seven deals by foreign investors involving Russian assets, worth a combined USD 281.8 million. In the same period a year earlier the agency recorded eight such deals worth roughly three times as much, at USD 911.4 million.

Among recent foreign M&A deals, AK&M's analysts cite the acquisition by Herbalife, the US company, of Bioniq, a personalised-nutrition company, from Vadim Fedotov; the purchase by the South Korean maker of Doshirak instant noodles of an office building on Zubovsky Boulevard in Moscow; and the sale of the Nikolskiye Ryady complex in St Petersburg to entities linked to Asabil Gasimov, an Azerbaijani billionaire.

The total value of all M&A deals over the six months came to USD 24.1 billion, against USD 18.3 billion a year earlier. More than 42 % of the combined value of all transactions came from deals transferring private assets into state ownership. Most of the nationalised assets were agricultural, among them Rusagro, an agricultural group valued for the court at USD 7.74 billion. As a result, the transfer of Rusagro alone to Rosimushchestvo, the federal state-property agency, accounted for a third of the entire M&A market in the first half (32.1 %).

AK&M had earlier noted that the number of deals in which foreign business exited the Russian market fell sharply in 2025. Whereas in 2022–24 the departure of foreigners was the main driver of the rising number of M&A deals on the Russian market, last year such deals no longer had a serious effect on the overall figures.