London Stock Exchange Welcomes Pyaterochka To Its Main Market - First Russian Retail Company Joins The Main Market

Pyaterochka Holding N.V, a leading Russian grocery retailer, was today admitted to the London Stock Exchange’s Main Market.

At US$ 598 million, the Offering is the largest ever IPO by a Russian company in the retail sector.

Pyaterochka is the second Russian company to join the London Stock Exchange’s Main Market this year, following the IPO of Sistema in February 2005.

Chris Gibson-Smith, Chairman of the London Stock Exchange, said: “We are delighted to welcome Pyaterochka to the Main Market. The capital raised in this IPO demonstrates that London’s markets provide an excellent gateway for Russian companies to access international capital. We hope to see many more Russian companies join those already listed and traded here in London.”

To celebrate the occasion, David Noble, the Chairman of Pyaterochka, and Victor Beliakov, Board Director of Pyaterochka, opened the London Stock Exchange’s markets by switching on ‘The Source,’ a specially commissioned artwork in the main atrium of the London Stock Exchange’s new building in Paternoster Square.

A total of 14 Russian companies are traded on the London Stock Exchange’s Main Market. In 2004, the Exchange’s member firms traded approximately US$ 64 billion of Russian securities, an increase of 76 per cent on 2003. Trading in Russian securities represented around 59 per cent of the total trading volume on the International Order Book (IOB) in 2004.

In 2004, the London Stock Exchange attracted a total of 293 IPOs to the Main Market and AIM, of which 49 were international, accounting for 79 per cent of all IPOs in Western Europe. So far this year, there have been a total of 151 IPOs on the London Stock Exchange’s markets, raising a total of £2.7bn billion.

Pyaterochka is the largest grocery retailer in Russia in terms of sales, with a chain of 235 stores located in the Moscow and St. Petersburg areas as at 31 December 2004. In addition to the company’s own stores, franchisees operate stores under the Pyaterochka brand in the Russian regions outside the Moscow and St. Petersburg areas and in Kazakhstan and Ukraine (207 stores as at 31 December 2004).

Credit Suisse First Boston and Morgan Stanley acted as Joint Global Coordinators and Bookrunners for the offering.