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The purpose of this article is to analyze the initial public offerings (IPOs) of Russian companies in the context of the country's investment attractiveness and the readiness of its companies to list on stock exchanges, domestically and/or internationally. The analysis takes a balanced approach. It recognizes the positive aspects from the development of Russia's stock markets and the launched and planned IPOs of Russian companies, but underscores reasons for caution in assessing this developing situation, emphasizing the need to maintain a critical perspective. The article is intended to help determine, in the sphere of IPOs at least, whether Russia is currently, or is on the road to becoming, as solid as a BRIC.

Drawing upon publicly available material from English‐ and Russian‐language sources, the authors discuss the development of the two Russian stock exchanges and analyze the progress that Russian companies have made in successfully completing IPOs on Russian and foreign stock exchanges. The paper also analyzes the barriers faced by Russian companies in launching IPOs and/or attracting investment, including global factors, country‐level conditions, and individual firm characteristics.

The results of the analysis indicate that the Russian stock exchanges have developed reasonably well over the two decades since perestroika. Correspondingly, a substantial number of Russian companies have mounted successful IPOs not only on the Russian stock exchanges but also on international exchanges, particularly the London Stock Exchange. Yet the number of successful IPOs relative to the number of planned IPOs has been much smaller than the global average. The latter finding is attributed to Russia's particular investment problems, which extend beyond global economic forces, specifically the country‐level and firm‐specific factors, both of which heighten the risk for investors.

The authors' review of the literature has uncovered no journal articles covering the circumstances surrounding the IPOs of Russian firms. Additionally, the available sources seldom provide a balanced view, much less a critical view of the IPO landscape in the context of Russia's overall circumstances, particularly risk. Thus, this article, with its critical but balanced perspective, allows for a relatively objective analysis for theorists as well as investors as they approach the topic of Russian company IPOs, domestically or internationally.

After the collapse of communist and socialist regimes at the beginning of 1990s, a number of Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies started their journey into capitalism by establishing private property and capital markets. As a result, a number of stock markets have since been established in the region. Since then, they have displayed considerable growth in size and degree of sophistication, and they have attracted the interest of academics for a number of reasons. First, these markets provide a possibility to re-examine existing asset-pricing models and pricing anomalies in the conditions of the evolving markets. Market efficiency of the CEE markets is tested in Ratkovicova (1999) and Gilmore and McManus (2001); a version of the CAPM is tested in Charemza and Majerowska (2000); Mateus (2004) explores the predictability of European emerging market returns within an unconditional asset-pricing framework while the January-pricing anomaly is studied in Henke (2003). Second, in the light of growing interdependencies between world equity markets due to enhanced capital movements, numerous studies have investigated the extent to which emerging European stock markets are integrated with global markets, and the extent to which they are subjects to global shocks (Gelos & Sahay, 2000; Gilmore & McManus, 2002; Scheicher, 2001). Among the CEE markets, those of the Vysegrad countries (Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic) have attracted most of the attention of the academics due to their economies faster growth relative to their regional counterparts (Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Croatia and Baltic countries), in addition to political stability and their (successfully realized) prospects of joining the European Union (EU).

This study aimed to investigate return and volatility spillover between the Borsa Istanbul (BIST) and the Moscow Stock Exchange (RTS).

This study used generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model for volatility and the Aggregate Shock (AS) model for return and volatility spillover. The data are divided into six sub-periods. Period events take place between Turkey and Russia.

BIST investors considered the return and volatility of the RTS, it is observed that Moscow Stock Exchange investors considered only the return of BIST at the full sample. It is only a return spillover from BIST to RTS and neither the return nor the volatility of the RTS is spillover to BIST in the pre-crisis period. No evidence of return and volatility spillover between the BIST and the RTS in the post-crisis period. The returns and volatility spillovers between Russia and Turkey are mutual feedback in the jet crisis period.

Economic developments between Turkey and Russia is growing rapidly in recent years. The return and volatility analysis between the stock exchanges of these two countries is important for investment decisions.

There are many studies in the literature about emerging markets. There are also Turkish and Russian stock exchanges in these studies. However, this study only examined return and volatility spillover analysis between the Turkish and Russian stock exchanges and prevents the results from being overlooked among other countries.

The main aim of this paper is to examine the role of the board of directors in Russia with specific attention to their independence, employee relations and ability of successful adaptation of the international standards.

The authors used a survey questionnaire to provide an empirical example from a transition economy to the corporate governance literature by exploring the attitudes of the 55 board directors from 30 listed companies on the Russian Trading System (RTS) Stock Exchange.

The respondents recognise the board of directors as an important instrument of efficient and good corporate governance practice. More surprisingly, they are also in favour of employee representatives on the board of directors and agree that board size and composition should be enhanced by employee representatives on the board.

Even though 200 questionnaires were distributed and the response rate was 28 per cent, the authors know that they cannot generalise results for all directors of 1,414 listed companies on the Russian Trading System Stock Exchange from this level of response. In addition, questions might have some elements of subjectivity.

Policy makers in Russia should continue reforms in Russian corporate governance to improve transparency and accountability to adopt international standards and to attract foreign capital.

This study is one of the most comprehensive studies to explain the role of directors of listed companies in corporate governance throughout a survey questionnaire in Russia. The authors believe that the study contributes to the literature in two ways: theoretically by examining the attitudes of Russian listed company directors in the literature and empirically by conducting a survey among listed companies' directors to evaluate the attitudes of boards of directors, and employee relations in Russia.

This study aims to examine whether the publication of analyst recommendations has reaction in the Russian stock market. This study also aims to determine the other factors that influence the reaction.

Event study analysis (ESA) and regression models are used in this study.

The study finds that Russian stock market significantly reacts to analyst recommendations publications. Then study deeply investigates about the influence of other factors on the Russian market when an analyst's recommendations are published such as changes in recommendation levels, companies' size and general economic situation. The analysis done in the context of three types of recommendations: “buy,” “hold” and “sell.” The study finds that the market reacts not only to separate forecasts and subsequent recommendations, but also to the changes in recommendations' levels as well. Interestingly, the study finds that the impact of crises is not found to be a significant factor in the context of the Russian market.

Analysts used to spend much more resources on conducting a fundamental analysis than ordinary investors do. Therefore, they usually possess valuable privileged information that is supposed to influence stock prices when published. However, the present study argues that the direction, extent and period of a reaction of an analyst's recommendations are highly complicated and depend on what factors are under consideration in a particular research. Very often, the authors who dedicate their papers to develop and study markets choose a couple of (or even one) factors and delve into them. Nevertheless, to the author's best knowledge, few frequently cited and well-conducted research focused on such an emerging market as the Russian one. Thus, it seems reasonable that there is a gap in the literature that needs to be filled while considering other important factors. The study findings have a significant investment policy content.

In several senses, the present study is unique. First, it investigates whether analyst recommendations sufficiently affect the Russian stock market; second, it determines whether the significant factors such as changes in recommendation levels, companies' size and general economic situation have influence on the reaction. Finally, the study discusses about whether there is an impact of crises in the present study findings.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the influence of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption by Russian public companies on the value relevance of financial reporting in Russia.

We selected 67 Russian public companies that reported both under Russian Accounting Standards (RAS) and IFRS for four consecutive years (2006–2009).

The main limitation of the chapter is the sample, but this can be explained by the fact that only 67 companies in Russia report under the two standards (RAS and IFRS). So the sample could not be increased as there were no other companies that fulfilled the characteristics of the sample.

The results obtained show that on the Russian market there is no evidence of increased value relevance of financial reporting to external users of financial information after adopting IFRS when comparing and evaluating the two regimes (RAS and IFRS) unconditionally. Such results can be explained by the notion of mock compliance which originated due to the institutional differences between the RAS and IFRS development environments.

Adoption of IFRS by companies in emerging markets has been a subject of interest for lots of researchers, but this is the first research of its kind in the field of value relevance of adoption of IFRS on the Russian market.

This paper aims to explore whether individual intellectual capital of a fund manager allows mutual fund to outperform market.

The sample includes 85 Russian equity funds for the period of 2013. First, Jensen’s alpha for each fund has been calculated, and then cross-sectional regression analysis has been used. While only a part of fund managers publish biographic sketches, the authors use the Heckman procedure to control for self-selection issues.

The results support the idea that the individual characteristics indicate the possibility to earn abnormal alpha. Managers with economic education and with Moscow education perform better than others. Relationship between both fund performance measures and manager’s experience has inverted U-shape. Jensen’s alpha reaches its highest level at the point of 9 years, whereas beta – at 10 years of manager’s experience.

Investigation can be improved by including more variables that influence the disclosure of managers’ personal information, for example, by conducting surveys. Additionally, cross-sectional data restrict the analysis.

The discovered characteristics of managers’ intellectual capital can be used as additional screening tool for the investor who is deciding on mutual fund choice in Russia. While individual intellectual capital is observable and more persistent in time in comparison with the past fund performance, such tool allows better decision-making.

This is the first paper that explores which characteristics of Russian fund managers are connected with higher abnormal return (measured by Jensen’s alpha) and risk (beta) of mutual funds.