CEE Equity

The IPO for Polish car leasing firm, Prime Car Management, has been priced at Z44 ($14.49) a share, near the bottom of original price guidance.

Employees of Poland's Alior Bank sold shares received through an incentive scheme on Monday, with the deal completed quickly and without any of the long waits that often come with Polish deals.

Cable firm Polska Multimedia launched an IPO on Wednesday, as the sector continues to drive ECM issuance across Europe.

Polish car leasing firm Prime Car launched an IPO on Monday, the first eastern European IPO to launch since the unrest in Ukraine hit emerging markets valuations.

The Ukraine crisis may cause a stream of Russian IPOs to be pushed back by months, but bankers active in the region say that the political upheaval may have even more alarming an impact on equity capital markets by scaring international, non-specialist investors away for years.

Emerging markets are only for experts, as events in Ukraine and Russia showed this week. Big returns and big deals do not change that: they just make the stakes higher. This week, Lenta proved yet again that no matter how compelling the story, or well-liked the deal, investors should bear in mind that any apparently huge reward is always matched by commensurate risk.

New investors in Lenta were hurting on Monday after buying shares in the Russian hypermarket chain days before worries around Ukraine dragged Russian stocks down and pulled Lenta's valuation with them.

Who says the days of the retail emporium are numbered? IPO investors this week visited three distinct departments, stocking up on exorbitantly-priced AO World, an online white goods shop, McColl's, a dowdy dividend yield UK cornershop chain, and Lenta, a Russian hypermarket that has been shrugging off emerging markets volatility.

The memory of a difficult deal from Tinkoff Credit Systems late last year is still haunting Russian banks and other issuers hoping to bring a listing in 2014 and beyond.

Lenta narrowed guidance on its $1bn IPO on Wednesday, having seen wide-spread demand for the deal as investors seek the latest exposure to the consumer retail sector.

Russian lender Credit Bank of Moscow is pushing on with plans for a $500m IPO later in the year, hoping that Russian equities continue to improve after the disruption in January.

Lenta began bookbuilding on its $1bn IPO on Friday, seeing off worries that the deal might not even make that early stage after a rocky few weeks in emerging markets.