MOSCOW â€" One of Russia's largest cellphone companies, MegaFon, announced plans to go public later this year on London Stock Exchange.
The initial public offering, which could be one of the largest for a Russian company in recent years, would be the second big debut for Alisher Usmanov, MegaFon's majority owner. Mr. Usmanov, who is Russia's richest man, was an early investor in Facebook, the American social networking company that went public this spring.
But MegaFon could face a rocky reception to the public markets.
The stock markets have not been kind to newly public companies. Facebook is trading more than 40 percent below its offering price.
MegaFon faces its own challenges as well. While its competitors have expanded more broadly in former Soviet states and other emerging markets, MegaFon is narrowly focused on Russia at a time when the country's economic growth is projected to be slowing.
The I.P.O. also comes on the trailing edge of a cellphone boom in the emerging markets. After experiencing explosive growth, the market is largely saturated. Even in remote parts of the former Soviet Union, everybody who wants a cellphone has one.
With dwindling opportunities for customer growth, MegaFon, which is the second-largest operator by number of subscribers, has been adjusting its strategy to bolster profits. The company is now focused on extracting more income from each customer, becoming the largest provider of wireless data services in Russia.
The company had intended to put about 20 percent of its shares on the market. But Kommersant, a Russian business newspaper, reported
on Tuesday that it might scale back because of the lackluster performance of the Russian stock exchange lately.
More than half the shares that will come onto the market are from a strategic investor, TeliaSonera of Sweden. The investor could sell as much as 10.6 percent of its stake, but plans to retain a blocking sh are of more than a quarter.
The company said the offering on the London Stock Exchange would be completed in the fourth quarter.
Mr. Usmanov, a native of Uzbekistan who got his start in post-Soviet business selling plastic bags, made a fortune in metals and mining
during the commodity boom of the past decade. He has since branched into high technology industries, following a strategy endorsed by the Russian government of using profits from natural resources to help diversify the economy away from dependence on fickle commodity prices.
After a series of successful investments in Russian Internet companies, Mr. Usmanov was among a consortium that plowed money into Facebook. At one point, the group owned nearly 10 percent of the social networking site.
