CEE Equity

Kaspi.kz, the Kazakh payments group, is preparing to list global depositary receipts (GDRs) on the London Stock Exchange this autumn, as EM deals provide a brief glimmer of hope for the UK capital as Brexit volatility has killed the hopes of many UK issuers.

Emerging market equities have had a torrid few weeks as investors sell riskier assets over fears they will suffer if US-China trade tensions exacerbating a global economic slowdown. This has limited the supply of new deals from certain countries this year but as always in EM there are pockets of opportunity and this year’s success story has been Russia.

A number of highly anticipated emerging market IPO issuers are understood to have shifted listing plans to next year instead of the last quarter of 2019.

Ready and willing equity investors are facing another year of frustration in Russia, with the country's IPO activity set to underwhelm until 2020.

The sellers of Oltin, a closed-ended fund seeking to invest in Uzbekistan, have decided to postpone a public listing and proceed with private fundraising after investors expressed a preference for an unlisted fund structure.

Asset managers are looking to the emerging markets as a hedge against a slowdown in the US and Europe.

Investors in London have been considering the opportunity to invest in Uzbekistan this week, through a new closed-end fund, Oltin, the first internationally listed security giving investors exposure to the Central Asian republic.

In this round-up, Chinese securities regulators allow their Hong Kong counterpart to access audit papers of Hong Kong-listed mainland companies, Chinese premier Li Keqiang vowed to lift the 51% foreign ownership cap on Chinese financial firms sooner than planned, and free-trade zones (FTZs) receive more autonomy in trying out new policies.

Interest from Russian accounts drove a $400m sale in steel company NLMK Group last week, with local demand remaining strong in the country for the right sectors and stocks.

TCS Group Holding, the Russian financial services company owned by founder Oleg Tinkoff, has completed a $300m primary capital raise by selling Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) on the London Stock Exchange, gathering a strong following from investors for the deal.

Shares in Petropavlovsk, the London-listed Russian gold miner, rose 7.4% on Thursday after the company issued a new $125m convertible bond to refinance and older note due in 2020.

A group of pre-IPO shareholders in Adyen, the Dutch payments company, have sold €311.8m of stock in response to reverse enquiries from investors. The Slovenian government also took advantage of the momentum in the blocks market to sell another 10% of NLB, the country’s largest bank.