14 DAY TRIAL // The recently renamed Mail.ru Group will be holding an IPO to sell off a reported 15 percent of its shares. It is said to be looking to get $500 million or $750 million, depending on the source, the latter figure valuating the company at $5 billion.
Mail.ru Group has been known as Digital Sky Technologies and is a Russian group with interests in several powerful local properties as well as investments in high-flying Silicon Valley companies such as Facebook and Zynga.
It is also intertwined with a couple of other interesting internet and media companies from developing countries, Naspers from South Africa and Tencent from China.
"MAIL.RU GROUP LIMITED, the largest Internet company in the Russian-speaking world based on monthly unique users, today announces its intention to proceed with an offering of ordinary shares in the form of Global Depositary Receipts to be admitted to a Standard Listing on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker 'MAIL'. One GDR will represent an interest in one ordinary share of the Company," Mail.ru Group said in a filing at the London Stock Exchange.
The company has not shared any details about the size of the IPO. Mail.ru Group owns the namesake site, one of the largest websites in the Russian market.
It also owns Odnoklassniki, a social network, Moi Mir, Agent iM and ICQ, which it recently bought from AOL. Furthermore, it holds large stakes in Vkontakte, the largest social network in Russia, 24.99 percent, and other local companies.
Mail.ru, is not a direct replacement for DST. Rather, Mail.ru Group took over DST's main Russian investments, while DST Global took over international ones. But Mail.ru may still have retained stakes in those international investments as well.
DST held as much as 5 percent of Facebook and a smaller stake in Zynga, the social gaming powerhouse which also lists investors like Google and Japan's SoftBank. It also invested in Groupon another highly valued startup in the US.
South African group Naspers recently traded its stake in Mail.ru, 39.3 percent, in exchange for a 28.7 percent chunk of DST. Naspers is also an investor in the Chinese Tencent which operates the hugely popular QQ instant messenger and a host of related websites. Tencent, on the other hand, owned a 10 percent stake in DST.
Mail.ru investors also include Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov and DST founder Yuri Milner. Milner now serves as Chairman of Mail.ru Group.
"I am very pleased to announce our intention to list on the London Stock Exchange, and we are proud to have reached this important milestone in our Company's development," Milner said.