Facebook Investor Mail.ru Hopes to Get an $5.7 Billion IPO

Mail.ru Group, the company behind the eponymous Russian website and an investor in a large number of Russian online properties as well as companies such as Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, has filed for an initial public offering at the London Stock Exchange.

The company announced the move earlier this month, but has now made the final arrangements and also revealed the price it plans to reach, $23.70 to $27.70 per share.

Mail.ru Group will sell 3.03 million newly issued shares and 28.59 million existing shares from stakeholders. With these prices, the company could raise as much as $876 million.

It also values the company at between $4.78 billion and $5.63 billion, more than previously anticipated. The company had said that it plans to sell 15 percent of its shares, but had not revealed the price.

Mail.ru Group will use part of the proceeds to buy a 7.5 percent stake in vKontakte, the largest social network in Russian-speaking countries.

The company already owns a stake in vKontakte which will be raised to 32.49 percent. Mail.ru will pay $112.5 million for the new shares, part of which will come from the IPO.

Mail.ru Group is the successor of Digital Sky Technologies, but is not a direct replacement for the latter company. Mail.ru Group mostly took over DSTs Russian properties though it does own small stakes in Facebook, Zynga and Groupon.

The bulk of the ownership of international websites and online services remained with the renamed DST Global, though.

Mail.ru Group is owned by a number of Russian business men with stakes also owned by other media and web companies in developing countries.

Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov owns a stake and so does DST founder Yuri Milner. The South African media group Naspers, China's Tencent as well as Goldman Sachs and other financial groups.