Europe has a new biggest internet company.
Russia’s Mail.ru Group had priced its London IPO, in which it was floating 32.93 million shares (17 percent of the company) at up to $27.7 per share, raising $916 million and valuing it at $5.71 billion.
As Reuters reports, that “makes it Europe’s largest listed internet business”. Shares actually reached a $39 high by mid-morning and closed at $36.
Here they are on LondonStockExchange.com.
FT.com reports Mail.ru Group is the target of several lawsuits suits from entertainment owners including EMI Music Publishing group, who claim its eponymous Mail.ru and Vkontakte social network are facilitating copyright abuse. But the paper’s report that the suits would “dog” the IPO aren’t borne out by this morning’s show.
Mail.ru is the new name for the domestic-focused wing of leading Russian internet investor Digital Sky Technologies; its assets include…
-Odnoklassniki
-Moi Mir (My World)
-Agent iM
-ICQ
–Mail.ru
-Vkontakte: 24.99 percent stake
-Qiwi: 25.09 percent
MarketWatch: “Mail.ru said the net proceeds from the primary portion of the offering would be used to fund, in part, the agreed acquisition of an additional 7.5% equity stake in vKontakte, Russia’s largest social networking site measured by daily unique users, for $112.5 million.”
The money raised gives it even greater resources with which to buy up chunks of the RuNet. International-facing DST Global owns…
-Facebook: 2.38 percent
-Zynga: 1.47 percent
-Groupon: 5.13 percent
Mail.ru’s IPO experience could prove useful in considering any floatation for Facebook.