IPO Eye – Q1 2013

 

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Home-grown listings emerge to break London IPO drought

2012 was one of the driest years on record for Main Market IPOs with only four listings taking place raising just over £1bn. As such market expectations moving into 2013 could be best described as subdued albeit layered with a cautious degree of optimism given the successful listing and post-trading performance of Direct Line in October 2012. Thankfully this optimism was well placed with increased Main Market activity this quarter.

Main Market — two listings and two re-admissions took place raising cumulative funds of £1.24bn, already bettering total funds raised on the Main Market during the whole of 2012. £178mn was raised from two listings in the equivalent 2012 quarter.

AIM — five admissions raised £20mn, down from the £28mn raised from five admissions in the corresponding quarter of 2012.

GDR — one admission raised $850mn (USD) (zero admissions — Q1 2012).

Highlights

Main Market — the obvious highlight for this quarter is that four UK companies have managed to fund raise and have seen stable post-trading performance to date. Of additional note, these businesses were not from the natural resources sector, which has dominated the London market in recent years.

AIM — Q1 is traditionally a quiet quarter for AIM admissions and this quarter continued that trend. The diversity of the London market was again reflected with four of the five AIM admissions originating from two US and two Israel domiciled businesses.

GDR — Zenith Bank became the third Nigerian Bank to list GDRs in London. Post-trading performance has been stable to date which may encourage further African financial institutions to start considering London as a listing destination.

Global — This quarter saw 150 deals take place globally raising $24bn (USD) compared to 157 deals last year raising $14.3bn (USD). The Americas dominate, accounting for 47% of total funds raised during the quarter with the EMEIA region in second place, accounting for 30%. The Asian market is off to a slow start in 2013, primarily due to a halt in listings on Chinese exchanges since November 2012.