Published: January 22, 2013
The Moscow Exchange is set to list shares on its own trading platform.
The Moscow Exchange (MICEX-RTS) has announced plans to carry out an IPO on its own trading platform, the CJSC MICEX Stock Exchange.
Unconfirmed reports, initially carried by Russian news agency RIA, suggest that the offering could be made as early as February. Although no figure has been made public, Bloomberg reports that the sale is set to raise as much as US$1bn.
Sergei Shvetsov, chairman of the Moscow Exchange Supervisory Board, said of the deal: “The Exchange’s own listing is a key element of our strategy to promote the development of the local capital markets as well as to broaden the regional and international appeal of Russia as a financial centre. As a public company, Moscow Exchange will be committed to demonstrating leadership in corporate governance practices and transparency.”
The MICEX exchange currently lists 649 companies. The decision of its parent company to float comes in the wake of a similar move by Megafon, the country’s second-largest mobile operator, which successfully raised US$1.83bn in an IPO at the back end of 2012. With emerging market investors looking for anything that will yield, sentiment is strong in Russia for 2013.