CEE Equity

Emerging markets are coming to the fore in equity capital markets this year, fulfilling predictions of a good year for ECM issuance from more challenging markets.

Polyus Gold, Russia’s largest gold producer, priced a $250m convertible bond on Friday, just a day after issuing a separate mandate for a new Eurobond.

The equity block trades market in EMEA opened the week on Monday night with a TL496m ($132m) sale of stock in Mavi Jeans, the Turkish jeans maker that floated in Istanbul last year. The trade was covered inside an hour.

MLP Sağlık Hizmetler, also known as MLP Care, the largest private healthcare provider in Turkey, has begun investor education for its flotation on Borsa Istanbul, in which it hopes to raise about TL500m ($133m) of primary proceeds.

The poll is open for GlobalCapital’s Equity Capital Markets Awards for 2017 and we invite market participants to have their say on the best performers of last year.

Equity syndicates expect a robust IPO pipeline to power strong issuance in the first half of this year, which could set 2018 up to surpass what was a good 2017.

Sistema, the Russian conglomerate controlled by Vladimir Yevtushenkov, has been forced to cancel the $70m sale of Detsky Mir shares it conducted on Monday night, after some of its assets, including its stake in the toy store, were frozen by an arbitration court in the Republic of Bashkortostan.

Shares in Detsky Mir, the Russian toy retailer, fell 8.2% on Tuesday after Sistema, the Russian conglomerate controlled by Vladimir Yevtushenkov, and the Russia-China Investment Fund sold some of their shares in the company through an accelerated bookbuild on Monday night.

EN+ Group, the Russian power and metals company controlled by Oleg Deripaska, rose more than 2% in Moscow trading on Monday morning after posting its first results since its $1.5bn IPO in early November.

An undisclosed shareholder has sold $114m of shares in Mail.ru, the Russian internet services company. The sale came a month after the company's co-founder Dimitry Grishin placed 4.7m global depositary receipts with institutional investors in a block trade, after numerous reverse enquiries.

In what is turning out to be a busy week for block trades, shareholders in Etalon Group, one of Russia's biggest residential property developers, are tonight selling a 10% stake in the company worth $109m, in the form of London-listed GDRs.

Globalworth Real Estate Investments, the Aim-listed real estate investment trust focused on Poland and Romania, is pushing ahead with its proposed €300m capital increase, after securing the backing of several cornerstone investors.