MOSCOW, February 15 (RIA Novosti – The Moscow Exchange is holding an initial public offering (IPO) on its own trading floor to raise 15 billion rubles ($500 million) from the offer, the bourse said on Friday.
The offer price has been set at 55 rubles ($1.80) per share, which would boost the total market capitalization of Russia’s major equity bourse to 126.9 billion rubles (US$ 4.2 billion). Dealing begins on Friday.
The Moscow Exchange initially set the IPO price guidance at 55-63 rubles per share, but later narrowed the range to 55-57 rubles.
"Moscow Exchange's IPO, the largest ever solely on a Russian exchange platform, marks a major step forward in its development as well as the future growth prospects of the Russian financial market,” Moscow Exchange CEO Alexander Afanasyev said.
“The fact that the offering was oversubscribed demonstrates a vote of confidence in Russian listed equities and is genuine recognition of the recent initiatives to develop Russia's capital market infrastructure,” he added.
The Moscow Exchange plans to use the IPO proceeds to boost the capital of its clearing subsidiary, the National Clearing Centre, and also to upgrade its information technology infrastructure, the bourse previously said in a statement.
The Moscow Exchange, which was established in 2011 by a merger of Russia’s two major stock exchanges, the MICEX and RTS, is offering ordinary shares to institutional and retail investors in Russia and institutional investors outside Russia.
China’s Chengdong Investment Corp., a unit of CIC International Co., may get as much as 25 percent of the shares being offered in the IPO, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
Russia’s Direct Investment Fund, which was set up to lure foreign investment to modernize the Russian economy, will invest $80 million in the Moscow Exchange’s IPO, Fund CEO Kirill Dmitriyev said on Friday.
Of the 15 billion rubles worth of stock to be sold in the IPO, around 9 billion rubles will be stock sold by existing investors via Micex Cyprus Ltd. while 6 billion worth of new stock will be sold by Micex Finance, the exchange said.
Following the offering, the exchange will have a free float of around 30 percent of its stock, calculated as shareholders owning less than 5 percent, it said.
Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan, Sberbank CIB and VTB Capital are acting as joint global coordinators and joint bookrunners of the IPO, while Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs International, Morgan Stanley, Renaissance Capital and UBS Investment Bank are acting as joint bookrunners.
