A rollercoaster ride with the Caucasian billionaire

In his annual meeting with foreign journalists in January, President Putin enthused over his country’s record on initial public offerings: ‘Without any doubt, 2006 can be called the year of IPOs, because it was the first time that Russian companies carried out … IPOs worth dozens of billions of dollars on international and Russian exchanges…. And this is just the beginning.’

Indeed, this year’s schedule for Russian IPOs is even more packed, as companies rush to issue before the presidential elections next year. Analysts estimate Russian companies will attempt to raise as much as $25 billion this year, well ahead of last year’s total of $15 billion. Sberbank, the country’s biggest bank, is launching a secondary issue likely to be worth around $11 billion. UES, the electricity monopoly, is preparing ten issues by its subsidiaries, worth a total of up to $20 billion, for launch over the next 18 months. And several issues have already taken place so far in 2007, including Polymetal, a gold venture, which raised $600 million in January. These Russian share issues are among the biggest in global markets these days — and the most colourful. Ever since Wimm-Bill-Dann, the Russian juice company, preceded its 2002 flotation in the US with the announcement that its main shareholder had served eight years in a Soviet gulag for a violent crime, Russian IPOs have been a continuing source of eyebrow-raising revelations. This year’s batch is no exception.

Take Polymetal. Its main shareholder is Suleiman Kerimov, who comes from the Caucasus and compares himself to Warren Buffett. The self-styled ‘Sage of Daghestan’ has become one of Russia’s richest men over the last four years with an estimated fortune of $9 billion, and has done particularly well through his relationship with the management of Sberbank. In 2004, he acquired a 4 per cent stake in Gazprom, partly through a loan from Sberbank, according to sources close to his company, Nafta Moskva.