Sistema, the Russian conglomerate that includes real estate and telecoms, can congratulate itself on its choice of banks to lead its initial public offering. Credit Suisse First Boston, which is pre-marketing with Morgan Stanley for the company's $1.5bn (€1.2bn) flotation next month, ran the best-performing European IPOs last year when weighted by size and performance against a local market index.

Its performance was even more impressive as it led the greatest number of deals in the sample. Last year the Swiss-American bank also priced the highest proportion of its deals in the top half of the range.