Fact box: Population: 38 million (9 in Europe, after Ukraine and before Romania)

Bloomberg article on the upcoming IPOs boom. Good ground level details. Written for investors, but will give you a good overview of what the Poles are thinking of selling.

Warsaw Exchange Starts Share Sale, Extending Polish IPO Boom

By Pawel Kozlowski and Marta Waldoch - Oct 14, 2010

Poland seeks to raise as much as 1.15 billion zloty ($415 million) from the initial public offering of the Warsaw Stock Exchange, the first bourse operator in emerging Europe to go public.

The government, which is selling 26.8 million shares, or a 64 percent stake of the country’s sole stock exchange, set the maximum price for individual investors at 43 zloty a share, the Treasury Ministry said on its website. Orders will be taken for institutional investors starting tomorrow and ending on Oct. 28, based on a prospectus published on the exchange’s website today. The shares will begin trading Nov. 9, based on the prospectus.

The IPO is part of a plan to raise 25 billion zloty ($8.8 billion) this year to help finance the budget gap and curb borrowing. Poland has sold stakes in the nation’s biggest insurance, energy, copper and phone companies this year.

“The words ‘stock exchange’ alone are electrifying for investors in Poland, so we may have solid demand,” said Jaroslaw Lis, who helps manage the equivalent of $2.5 billion at Union Investment TFI SA in Warsaw. “Current market sentiment will help the sale, as will the exchange’s monopoly position.”

Based on the maximum offer price, the Warsaw exchange is valued 17.9 times its 2009 net income, according to Bloomberg calculations. NYSE Euronext, the biggest operator of U.S. stock exchanges, trades at 12 times reported earnings for the past 12 months, while Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. is valued at 11 times reported profit, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Most IPOs

The Polish stock exchange is the third-largest in emerging Europe after those of Russia and Turkey, with a market capitalization exceeding $193 billion. It has expanded the fastest in the region, more than doubling the number of traded companies and almost tripling daily stock turnover in the past decade, according to data on its website.

Poland has had the highest number of IPOs annually in central Europe since at least 2004, Bloomberg data show. Companies have raised $4.36 billion in 52 IPOs this year, with the largest coming from state-owned energy utility Tauron Polska Energia SA and insurer Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen SA.

Czech betting company Fortuna Entertainment Group NV, Polish television broadcaster 4Fun Media SA as well as property developers Robyg SA and ED Invest SA are among companies holding IPOs in Warsaw this month as the market’s benchmark WIG20 Index climbed to the highest level in more than two years.

‘Beating Heart’

“The bourse is the vibrant beating heart of our economy and its IPO is just another step in our plan to build a strong financial hub in Warsaw,” Treasury Minister Aleksander Grad said at a news conference today.

Accelerating state-asset sales and rising stock turnover on the Polish exchange have prompted international banks to expand. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and UBS AG this year announced plans to set up offices in Warsaw. Credit Suisse Group AG reopened a brokerage this year after shuttering its Warsaw stock-dealing business in 2003.

The bourse is the second exchange IPO this year, following a June listing by CBOE Holdings Inc., the last major U.S. securities exchange owned by its members. Individual investors will be offered as much as 30 percent of 26.8 million shares being sold in the IPO and the government is to decide on the sale of its remaining 35 percent stake in the next three to five years, according to the prospectus.

There are more than 550 companies trading on Warsaw’s main market and NewConnect platform for smaller companies. The CEE Stock Exchange Group, which includes regional peers in Vienna, Budapest, Prague and Ljubljana, had 259 companies last month, according to the Federation of European Securities Exchanges.

Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and UBS are global coordinators of the Warsaw exchange’s IPO. Ipopema Securities SA, KBC Groep NV, Societe Generale SA, PKO Bank Polski SA, Bank Ochrony Srodowiska SA, Alior Bank SA, Banco Espirito Santo SA, IDM SA and Wood & Co. are helping manage the sale.

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Eurasia Daily Monitor writes an analysis after Lavrov’s early September visit to Poland. Lavrov’s Visit to Poland: Is Russia’s Rapprochement with Poland Real? Eurasia Daily Monitor – October 5, 2010

Stephen Blank In the last couple of years, Russia has engaged in a rapprochement policy with Poland preceding the death of Poland’s President, Lech Kaczynski and many leading members of the government in a fatal air crash on April 10, outside Smolensk. However, this policy certainly received a tremendous impetus from that event as demonstrated by Russia’s seemingly openly emotional response to the tragedy. Russian foreign policy has in fact gradually shifted, expressed in a leaked foreign policy document, towards improved relations with Europe (Russky Newsweek, May 11). Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov’s recent visit to Poland intended to carry that process even further. Lavrov’s talks with Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, and Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, covered issues of European security, Moscow’s perspectives as expounded in its draft treaty on the subject, future relations between Russia and the EU as Poland will be the EU president in 2011, as well as visa-free travel for Russians to EU member countries. They also discussed Kaliningrad, the progress of the commission to investigate troubled events in Russo-Polish history, and energy relations. Lavrov used the occasion to bring up the prospects for the Russian-EU Partnership for Modernization (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, www.mid.ru, September 3). He then delivered a speech to a gathering of Polish ambassadors. Both before and after the talks, Lavrov expressed general happiness with recent trends in bilateral relations and noted that several agreements with Poland are being drafted (www.mid.ru, August 30, www.mid.ru, September 5). At the same time the discussions, particularly with Poland’s ambassadorial corps, were “detailed and frank,” suggesting points of disagreement, particularly as regards the Partnership for Modernization. Equally, both sides apparently strove to enhance bilateral relations and move in the direction of a more genuine partnership. In that context, Warsaw expressed its desire for a “demilitarization” of the perennially troubled bilateral relationship (www.mid.ru, September 3; www.itnsource.com, September 3). The good feelings expressed here certainly tally with the Tusk government’s efforts to establish a lasting demilitarized relationship and genuine partnership with Moscow. Thus, an energy agreement was also recently concluded between the two states. From the Polish government’s standpoint, this agreement will ensure the continuation of direct gas supplies from Russia to Poland for the long term. Specifically, this contract between Gazprom and the Polish Gas and Oil Company (PGNiG) increases their previous contract for gas exports from Russia, extending its duration from 2022 to 2037 and writing off Gazprom’s debts from 2008-09. Gazprom will also acquire a monopoly through the Yamal pipeline across Poland until 2045 (even as it is undermining that pipeline by building North Stream pipeline to Germany) along with very low gas transit fees. Not surprisingly, the EU initially opposed this deal (Gazeta Wyborcza, September 6). Yet, on September 14 the EU retracted its opposition to the deal that had been generated by the European Commission’s doubts about the operator of the Yamal pipeline supplying gas directly to Poland and through to Europe. An independent operator must supervise the gas deliveries to Poland in conformity with EU requirements, so that all market dealers have equal access to the infrastructure. Evidently those concerns were satisfactorily resolved by September 14 (ITAR-TASS, September 21). Warsaw’s concerns about being bypassed for gas supplies due to the forthcoming operation of the Nord Stream pipeline clearly provided Russia with favorable terms. Nord Stream allowed Moscow to expand its power over recipients of its energy. Nevertheless, a more cynical interpretation of this deal and of the incentive for the rapprochement with Poland as part of the general turn to the West should be looked at. would cite not only the ongoing economic crisis in which Russia and Europe find themselves but also the potential that Poland might contain huge deposits of shale gas that would eliminate any need for Russian gas at least in large quantities (Gazeta Wyborcza, September 6). Indeed, critics of this deal and of the policy of rapprochement stepped up their attacks. They noted that Lavrov’s annual speech to the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) on European relations omitted any mention of Poland (www.mid.ru, September 1). Thus, Marcin Kaczmarski of the Center for Eastern Studies (www.osw.waw.pl) charged that the new moves in Russian foreign policy merely represent efforts to find more efficient ways to implement old strategic goals. Certainly, despite rhetoric to this end, there have been no signs of genuine modernization or domestic reform. Therefore in foreign policy the changes are similarly atmospheric rather than substantive (Center for Eastern Studies, September 1). This criticism radically diverges from the more welcoming responses to Russian diplomacy pursued by the government and recommended by such veterans as Adam Rotfeld (Eastern Approaches, www.economist.com/blogs, September 6). Ultimately, only time will tell who is correct, but from the practical standpoint, Gazprom, using Nord Stream has secured extraordinarily generous terms in Poland tangible benefits for Poland remain unclear. =====================================================================

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