Facebook investor's IPO oversubscribed

MOSCOW, RUSSIA: Facebook investor, Mail.Ru Group's initial public offering is up to two times oversubscribed with nearly two weeks left before pricing, financial market sources told Reuters on Wednesday.

Fund managers said the organisers put total bids as of Tuesday night at $1.1 billion. Mail.ru was looking to raise up to $876 million in the sale of 16 percent of its shares in a London IPO to be priced on Nov. 8.

Another financial market source said that by Wednesday the book was two times oversubscribed, including bids at market.

The company set a range of $23.70-$27.70 per Global Depositary Receipt, for a total take of $749-$876 million.

"The demand is mainly from investors in Internet companies rather than traditional emerging market investors," one of the sources said, adding that marketing had bypassed Russian investors altogether.

A spokesman at Mail.Ru said he could not immediately comment.

The most eye-catching investments made by the company, formerly known as Digital Sky Technologies, led by two early investors in the Russian Internet, are in global social networking and development companies.

But its largest stakes are in stalwarts of the Russian Internet. It controls Mail.ru, one of Russia's first big freemail services and Odnoklassniki.ru, the Russian analogue of Classmates.com, as well as a stake in Facebook-style website Vkontakte.ru.