The contribution of initial public offerings to the growth of capitalization of the Russian stock market
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Initial public offerings remain an important but still insufficiently measured channel of stock-market expansion in Russia, especially after the institutional break of 2022 and the shift of investor demand toward domestic capital. The research gap is that Russian studies usually focus on individual deals or short-run price effects, while the contribution of equity issuance to aggregate market-capitalisation growth over a long horizon has been assessed only fragmentarily. This study measures the contribution of IPOs to Russian stock-market capitalisation in 2002–2025 and compares it with secondary and follow-on offerings. The dataset combines Moscow Exchange statistics, Bank of Russia data, and academic sources and covers 108 IPOs and 65 SPO/FPO deals. The annual coefficient is defined as the ratio of offering volume to annual growth in market capitalisation, but the substantive conclusions rely on weighted and robust indicators rather than on a simple arithmetic average, because annual ratios are highly asymmetric and sensitive to years with low or negative capitalisation growth. The results show that total IPO volume corresponds to 10.69% of net market-capitalisation growth over the full period and to 1.95% in growth phases only; the corresponding estimates for SPO/FPO are 6.26% and 0.77%. Median values are 0.27% and 0.00%, indicating that in a typical year issuance plays a limited role relative to market revaluation. The findings are relevant for policies aimed at stimulating public listings and expanding equity finance. Limitations stem from changing disclosure practices and from the fact that market capitalisation reflects not only issuance, but also market revaluation. In the broader BRICS comparative context, this makes it possible to interpret the Russian IPO market not only as a source of capitalisation growth, but also as an indicator of the financial system’s capacity to fund growth firms and technological upgrading.
Source: Theoretical economics
Language: English
Subfield: Finance
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7172024940