Moscow Exchange sees insufficient demand for big IPOs, proposes easing free float requirement

MOSCOW. Oct 4 (Interfax) - The Moscow Exchange proposes to consider easing free float requirements for large companies given the insufficient demand for big initial public offerings, the exchange's senior managing director for issuer and government relations, Yelena Kuritsyna said.

"This is the problem we're facing now [...] I already mentioned the scale of the deals we're seeing on the market. The market has now tested amounts of 10 billion-15 billion [rubles]. So far they're being put together, but deals of 3 billion-5 billion [rubles] are still more likely to be closed," Kuritsyna said at a discussion on the development of Russia's financial market in 2025-2027 at the Forum Analytic Center.

"This means that when we're talking about a major company with a large anticipated capitalization, in order to meet free float requirements, which amount to 10% for a Level 1 listing, it is necessary to do a very big deal, which the market simply can't digest right now," she said.

"Therefore, it seems that fine-tuning of regulation of listing requirements might be appropriate here so that specifically large companies with large capitalization, greater than 200 billion [rubles], say, could have preferential requirements for the size of the free float," Kuritsyna said.