HMS raises Russia fears after weak open

HMS Group suffered a poor start to trading in London on Wednesday after a cut-price, reduced size IPO made it over the finish line on Tuesday. The Russian company remained committed to doing a deal even though that meant scaling back its ambitions — an unusual result that a banker close to the market described as “pleasantly surprising”. But, after the poor start to trading — the shares were 1.6% down by mid-morning — and Friday’s postponement of a $400m listing for Russia’s Koks, what will happen to the remaining live ECM deals from the country? Read EuroWeek on Friday for coverage on these deals as well as the $550m IPO of ChelPipe — for which books are due to close on Wednesday — the $1bn IPO of Nord Gold scheduled to close on Friday and the $3.5bn block of VTB Bank shares being sold this week by the Russian government.