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| VTB’s $3.3 billion equity follow-on | |
| Joint global coordinators | Citi, VTB Capital |
| return to the Deals of the Year 2013 index | |
Despite the emergence of signs of recovery across the region, central and eastern Europe saw surprisingly little in the way of eye-catching deal flow in 2013. Activity in both M&A and equity capital markets remained subdued. The bond market feeding frenzy in the first half of the year produced some big transactions, but was short on innovation and complexity.
The same could not be said of VTB Bank’s $3.3 billion capital increase. More than six months in the making, the transaction – which amounted to 25% of the pre-offering share capital of Russia’s second-largest lender – presented a unique set of challenges for leads Citi and VTB Capital, and ultimately broke new ground by combining public and private elements in the largest-ever Moscow-only follow-on offering.
The deal’s success was by no means assured. In mid-2012, when the capital increase was first mooted, VTB’s share price had yet to recover from the battering it had received a year earlier when the group was forced to ask for a $14 billion state bailout to plug funding holes in its newly acquired subsidiary, Bank of Moscow.
