Metro AG, Germany’s largest retailer, delayed an initial public offering of its Russian Cash & Carry unit amid turmoil in the region.
Market conditions aren’t currently appropriate to proceed, the company said today in an e-mailed statement, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report.
“We continue to pursue our plans for an IPO of Metro Cash & Carry Russia,” the company said in the statement, adding that the plans were always contingent on having appropriate conditions in the capital markets and that “in light of the recent political developments, this is currently not the case.”
Metro’s move to push back the offering, which analysts at Nomura had estimated could value the unit at €7 billion ($9.7 billion), follows weeks of political instability in the region that has led to the Russian annexation of Crimea. The ruble has fallen about 10 per cent against the euro this year amid the worst diplomatic crisis since the cold war.
Metro, which operates Galeria Kaufhof department stores and Saturn home-electronics stores, said on January 20 that it planned to proceed with a partial IPO of the Russian unit, which operates about 72 outlets and generated sales of 183 billion rubles ($5.1 billion) in 2013. CEO Olaf Koch has said the company may hold the offering in the first half of this year.
On March 13, Russian billionaire Vladimir Evtushenkov’s children-goods retailer Detsky Mir Group postponed its planned London IPO amid the escalating tensions over Ukraine’s Crimea region, people familiar with the matter said at the time.
Bloomberg
