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As if people go to air shows to see presidents and kings. They go there to see pilots and state-of-the-art machinery - well, at least, regular people do. All sorts of officials and company executives go to talk business. On the first day of the show state-owned arms export monopoly Rosoboronexport announced that all of its structures would hold an IPO before 2012. It is planned that the shares of three companies - titanium producer VSMPO-Avisma, carmaker AvtoVAZ and helicopter holding Oboronprom - will be placed on the market as early as 2009.

Rosoboronexport is just getting ready to put the companies it controls on the market, while one of Russia's largest banks - VTB - is forced to address the market in order to keep the price of its shares up. On Monday, following a day of trading at the London Stock Exchange, VTB published an announcement from one of the bank's board members, Nikolai Tsekhomsky, which sought to clarify that the ongoing mortgage crisis in the U.S. won't affect the bank's work. Deputy chairman of VTB board Vasily Titov said that announcement was geared towards investors who were worried that the bank has U.S. mortgage securities in its portfolio.

Good reason, but only part of the real answer. In reality, over the past month VTB shares have fallen by 20% (or 15% to the price of placement) - and by another 1.38% on the day following the announcement at LSE. Analysts believe that VTB may be forced to announce a program to buy back its shares in order to boost investor confidence and prevent the share price from slipping further.

Years 2005-2007 are likely to go down in market history as the years of Russian IPO boom.

Over the last few years initial placement offers were held by such giants as state-controlled Rosneft Oil Company, state-owned VTB, the top savings bank Sberbank and a slew of other smaller firms. But it looks like the time of easy money for state-controlled companies is over.

In 2005 and 2006 almost any Russian firm could expect a great demand for its shares - simply because there were none available before and the Russian economy was showing all signs of booming (along with the global one, which is important). But despite all the advances, Russian economy and Russian companies are still viewed by Western investors with caution. The shares of Russian companies are much less often seen as long-term investments.

In the U.S. people often give newborn children gifts of shares in established market leaders, such as GE, AT&T or Microsoft. As children grow, the shares mature and by the time they come of legal age, they may have a small fortune on their hands. In Russia the custom of giving newborns Gazprom or Rosneft shares is still far from taking hold, because nobody truly knows or believes that either company (or any other firm whose shares can be bought and sold) will be around in 15-20 years.

This is not to say that investors buy the shares of Western firms for long-term investment only, while the shares of Russian firms are bought for market speculation. The shares are bought and sold in billions every day - many for quick profit, not for long-term dividends.

But it would be safe to say that shares of Russian companies are perceived as more risky and, are the first to go whenever investors need to clear out their portfolio. All of this is to say that the Russian IPO boom is over. It would be irresponsible to believe that AvtoVAZ shares would enjoy a great demand when placed on the market simply because they are securities of a Russian company.

If Russian companies want to continue enjoying demand for their shares, they should work on proving that they are risk-free and that they produce something that is really worth investing money in. Otherwise, every minor setback on the global stock markets will be followed by a need to buy back securities in order to avoid a drastic plunge in share price.