Czechoslovak Group’s (CSG) quickfire IPO bookbuild over 20-22 January provides a replicable model to handle geopolitical risk in uncertain times – one that is already being copied.

The market endured an exhausting flow of headlines last week, kicked off by US President Donald Trump threatening a tariffs escalator against European countries set on blocking his ambition to acquire Greenland. At the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, the president’s rhetoric then cooled, with Trump ruling out military action in his speech to delegates and then announcing “the framework of a future deal” for Greenland after a meeting with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte.

Keeping pace with the constant news flow and predicting its impact on stock and bond markets is almost impossible on a real-time basis, let alone over the traditional four weeks it takes to run a European IPO.

CSG and its lead banks had a better plan for its EUR 3.8bn Amsterdam IPO: don’t try and model geopolitics, or predict the whims of a changeable US president, over a month – just get in and out as fast as possible to cut the deal’s exposure to those risks.

BNP Paribas, Jefferies, JPMorgan and UniCredit acted as joint global coordinators on the IPO. Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, Erste Group and Morgan Stanley as joint bookrunners.

Berenberg was clearly taking notes: it’s acting as sole global coordinator on ASTA Energy Solutions’ Frankfurt IPO raising gross proceeds of up to EUR 190m, which has come to market with another accelerated timetable today (26 January) – bookbuild will run for just four days. Commerzbank (in cooperation with Oddo) and Raiffeisen Bank International are joint bookrunners alongside Berenberg.

One man volatility hedge – shorter IPO bookbuilds

A banker at the start of the second Trump administration commented to ECM Pulse that global equity markets were exposed to “one-man volatility”, in reference to the US president’s singular impact on financial markets and sentiment, a theme that has returned with a vengeance at the start of 2026.

This should tempt more IPO issuers to take some lessons from the CSG IPO.

Not only did CSG run a reduced timeline, but it also came to market at a fixed price – and with three cornerstones: Artisan Partners, BlackRock, and a subsidiary of QIA, derisking the process further.

“I think every transaction is going to be different, and it is going to be driven by order of priority of the client,” a banker close to the deal told ECM Pulse. “However, what worked incredibly well with CSG was also having the cornerstones on the deal, which significantly de-risked on volume and price from the start.”

It’s notable that ASTA – a substantially smaller deal – has taken a similarly belt-and-braces approach, launching with four cornerstones on board.

Sometimes securing that comfort from investors requires lengthy groundwork, even if the market exposure is fast-tracked. CSG had gone through an extensive period of pre-marketing, so there was a feeling among the syndicate that both the IPO bookbuild and the deal education period could be reduced.

This is not always going to be the case, with some IPOs needing a greater education period where investors meet with equity analysts to grasp the story.

However, a second banker on CSG the deal noted that while a longer education period might be needed in some IPOs, a truncated bookbuild should be possible in most European IPOs this year.

While this would mean sellers giving up some flexibility on price, with the need for a narrow range, or even a fixed price, it gives greater execution certainty at a time of intense risk.

The structure has been used before in European IPOs, including for JDE Peet’s 2020 IPO, also in Amsterdam, when deals were at risk of being cancelled due to the ever-changing news flow around the Covid-19 pandemic.

Europe’s equity bankers also know the risks they face in the second Trump administration.

Last year, President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs shut the European IPO market just before the traditional window, one of the busiest periods for new listings in the European calendar.

Source: Dealogic

While the stand-off over Greenland seems to have calmed for now, there is no guarantee that there won’t be another surprise escalation over the Arctic territory in the future. Also, even if there is no repeat of the Greenland tensions there will almost certainly be other market scares emanating from Washington DC as the president continues his iconoclastic reshaping of the global order. Smaller in magnitude and unlikely to materialise, Trump’s latest tariffs threat over Canada’s trading relationship with China is an indication of the rolling drama we can anticipate as the year continues.

The TACO trade notwithstanding, “banks are right to be nervous given that, with Trump, markets can blow up at any second – so it’s imperative to shorten market risk,” said an ECM banker away from the CSG deal planning an IPO for later this year.

Price flexibility boosts CSG aftermarket

CSG was trading at EUR 32.85 a share in the afternoon at close on its first trading day, 31.4% above its EUR 25 a share IPO price. It’s climbed further this morning to EUR 33.80 per share.

This news service reported last week that the deal was priced at a highly attractive discount to German defence business Rheinmetall which had surged by over 20% YTD by the time CSG launched.

In many cases, an IPO seller might want to take advantage of such a rally in peers, where the effort down the valuation against fast-appreciating targets might encourage overexuberance. This wasn’t the case with CSG, whose owner Michael Strnad – the son of founder Jaroslav Strnad – stuck to the business’s original valuation target and didn’t try to chase peers higher.

While this widened the discount to Rheinmetall, and other European defence firms, it gave investors even more reason to place orders – and buy more in the aftermarket.

“The company and founder really had two objectives: to get a successful IPO done with a strong aftermarket, and to get a great register of shareholders,” the second CSG banker said. “This was clearly achieved in this case.

“Obviously there were discussions on how much to squeeze on price, but in the end, we wanted to leave enough in the tank for the aftermarket, and the seller was very pragmatic on that.”

It has also worked well for Strnad, who now holds an 84.8% stake in a company with a EUR 32.8bn market cap alongside banking a EUR 2.5bn payday, at base deal size, from the IPO.

Not a bad result at all.

The success of CSG will bode well for other European IPOs, with ECM investors banking around 28% of alpha on day-one for the first big deal of the year.

It also is a good omen for Europe’s burgeoning pipeline of defence businesses readying their own listings, a sector that will only continue to benefit from the continent’s need to secure defence autonomy in a new world order. As with ASTA – whose hi-tech copper solutions for energy generation lean into another broad secular trend – those IPO candidates that can align with strategic impulses will feel more emboldened to take the plunge into public markets.

“I mean this was probably the best time ever to launch a European defence IPO, so we have to thank President Trump for that,” joked the first CSG banker.

ECM Pulse can’t disagree.