His spokesman said the baseline for valuations was an annual profit, not first-quarter earnings.

Sberbank, which made a record 226.6 billion roubles ($3.51 billion) in first-quarter net profit, has signed a deal to buy a 46.5 percent stake in Rambler Group, a smaller rival to Russia's most popular search engine Yandex.

(This version of the story corrects headline and first paragraph to refer to annual profit not first quarter, adds new second paragraph)

(Reporting by Tatiana Voronova; Writing by Andrey Ostroukh. Editing by Jane Merriman)