Private Equity Russia

The supposed pipeline of Russian IPO’s this year may reach $20 billion.  Following Oleg Deripaska’s IPO of RUSAL in Hong Kong, the big question is, what will be the IPO destination of choice – London or HK?  (New York, it seems, is not even in the running).  Foreign traded shares still sell at a significant premium to domestic shares, based on convenience and worries about transparency, regulations and liquidity on the domestic market.

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Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko met with a team from the Rothschild Group last week and has invited the group to provide valuation services for enterprises slated for privatization in the republic and to advise the government on their privatization program.

The team also met with senior members of the government and the leadership of the national bank.

“If agreed in principle, we could identify five to seven projects in the near future and develop them more seriously,” said Lukashenko.

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Kommersant has reported that Renaissance Group is restructuring its asset management division, Renaissance Investment Management into two separate units that will focus respectively on private client wealth management and institutional asset management.  This decision was taken due to the weakening position of Renaissance Investment Management in the market, largely due to the investment environment, management and ownership shakeups at the group level and the exodus of key managers and clients from the division over the past year.

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Unova has reported that the three VTB managing directors responsible for the bank’s venture capital activities have left the bank.

According to VTB Director of Asset Management Natalia Plugar, the three managers – Andrei Zyuzin, Sergei Morozov and Andrei Romashov, left the bank for reasons of their own career development and work on external projects.

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In the second half of 2010 The, Russian Venture Company will open a private equity fund for Infrastructure Innovation with committed capital of 2 billion rubles (approximately $67 million), according to Yan Ryazantsev, RVC’s Investment Director.

By innovation infrastructure, Ryazantsev told Interfax-Sibir, is meant the complete complex of services that support innovation and the needs of start-up companies.

Ordinarily, The Russian Venture Company works either through appointed management companies on a fund level, or manages and supplies funding entirely through its own resources.  In this fund, according to Ryazantsev, government and private funds will be jointly employed on a project level.

AllEquityFunds has published the first issue of its new English language magazine on the Private Equity industry in Russia.  The issue is free for download to all registered site users.  (note: registration is free, but it isn’t instantaneous.  There’s an approval process that usually takes a day or so.)

No word if this will continue to be free going forward, but it looks like a great resource.

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Siguler Guff’s Russia private equity investment arm Russia Partners has completed acquisition of a minority stake in cloud services automation and virtualization company Parallels.  Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In April 2009, Russia private equity group Almaz Capital reportedly acquired a 5% stake in Parallels for $11 million, suggesting a $220 million valuation at that time.

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