Over the past few years the Russian M&A market was by far the largest market in CEE & CIS in terms of deal value and volume - in 2007 alone, the Russian M&A market almost doubled to USD 130bn. This was the sixth consecutive year of growth and the Russian share of worldwide M&A activity has increased from less than 0.5% in 2002 to over 2.7% in 2007. However, due to the global economic and banking crises, M&A activity slowed down in 2008 and remains sluggish in 2009. We expect that we will see more transactions being closed in the second half of 2009.

Raiffeisen Investment has been active in Russia since 1997 through close cooperation with Raiffeisen Bank, the leading foreign bank in Russia. Raiffeisen Investment Russia offers corporate finance advisory services to both Russian and foreign companies in the area of Mergers & Acquisition, capital raising, and strategic alliances. We advise companies on both buy- and sell-side M&A transactions providing tailor-made and added-value solutions to our clients.

In addition to the M&A advisory, Moscow office is very active in providing the Infrastructure Finance advisory services to both private and public sectors. As Public Private Partnership is becoming an important mechanism in developing and financing infrastructure projects in Russia, Raiffeisen Investment is playing an active role in introducing best practices in various sectors such as transport and social infrastructure.