At long last, this is where Mail.ru Group – the new name for russian digital investor Digital Sky Technologies’ domestic assets – confirms it will IPO on the London Stock Exchange next month.
The group wants to float about 15 percent of its shares for at least $500 million, Reuters reports. But WSJ says the group is seeking $750 million, valuing it at over $5 billion.
That means Mail.ru is about to get plenty richer for an investment furrow it could now plough even harder.
Mail.ru may be listing in London, and DST may hold stakes in a growing number of overseas services, but this IPO is all about its backyard. Dmitry Grishin, in the announcement: “We believe we are well positioned to benefit from the expected growth of the Russian internet advertising market and the increase in internet value-added services.”
Digital Sky recently renamed as Mail.ru Group, which is going public. It owns the following and more…
— Odnoklassniki
— Moi Mir (My World)
— Agent iM
— ICQ
— Mail.ru
— Vkontakte: 24.99 percent stake
— Qiwi: 25.09 percent
But DST retained DST Global name for its overseas investments, which are not floating.
— Facebook: 2.38 percent
— Zynga: 1.47 percent
— Groupon: 5.13 percent
— And several Russian and Ukrainian venture investments
South Africa’s Naspers recently upped its stake in DST to 28.7 percent in return for giving it its chunk of the Mail.ru portal, which is the basis of the IPO.