Megafon listing raises $1.7bn - FT.com Shares in Megafon are set to begin limited trading in London and Moscow on Wednesday after the Russian mobile operator raised $1.7bn from an initial public offering. The shares were priced at $20, the bottom of a $20 to $25 range, giving Megafon a market capitalisation of $11.1bn at the listing. Megafon will be traded in the form of shares in Moscow, and global depositary receipts in London. The successful flotation marks the end of a challenging two months for the company, which had faced delays after Goldman Sachs pulled out as a lead bank on the deal just before Megafon was due to start its roadshow. People close to Goldman said it had been concerned about corporate governance issues. On the back of the bank's exit, the UK Listing Authority - an arm of the Financial Services Authority - took three weeks longer than expected to review the deal, forcing Megafon briefly to postpone the listing. Ultimately, Megafon sold a stake of just 15 per cent, as opposed to the 20 per cent stake it had hoped to sell when it first began preparing for the deal in September. At each setback during the listing, the deal was largely pushed forward by Sweden's TeliaSonera, which had been promised a 2012 Megafon IPO as part of a new shareholder agreement signed earlier this year, when Mikhail Fridman's Alfa Group sold out and Alisher Usmanov, another billionaire, took a controlling stake in the company. Mr Usmanov, Russia's richest man according to Forbes and a shareholder in Arsenal football club, has retained a controlling stake in Megafon following the IPO, while TeliaSonera has reduced its stake from 38 per cent to 29 per cent, allowing the company to pay down some of its debts. Megafon's offering is the biggest by a Russian company since aluminium producer Rusal completed its $2.2bn Hong Kong IPO nearly three years ago, and is likely to be followed by more offerings by Russian groups next year. These include several state-owned companies which are scheduled to be sold under Russia's privatisation programme. The government has already announced plans to sell 25 per cent of shipping group Sovcomflot in a cross-border IPO, and could also choose to float diamond monopoly Alrosa. Lender VTB and Rosneft, the oil and gas group, meanwhile, are both slated for secondary offerings.