IPO Watch Europe Annual Review 2008

London continued to be the most successful European market for Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in 2008 with an increased market share by offering value of 64%, despite suffering a major decline in the volume and value of its IPO activity during the year. Even in a dismal year for IPOs, due to the loss of confidence in the capital markets and the global economic crisis, London also continued to attract the majority of international offerings on European exchanges with 55% of the 81 completed and four of the top five by value, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers IPO Watch Europe review of 2008.

However, despite hosting or co-hosting seven out of the top 10 European IPOs by offering value, the total money raised in London last year from all listings was just €8,884 million, 77% down on the 2007 figure. This was raised from just 99 IPOs, a 69% decline from the 2007 figure. The review shows that both AIM and London’s Main Market suffered from this reduced level of activity.

Other highlights of 2008 included in the review are;

• In 2008 only three of the top 10 largest IPOs raised over €1billion whereas in 2007 all of the top 10 raised at least this amount;
• The Warsaw exchange, one of Europe’s youngest markets, ended up in second place after London in both volume and value terms, hosting or co-hosting two of the top 10 offerings;
• The two leading sectors for IPOs by volume were industrial goods and services and investment companies, although both saw a major decline in volume terms from the previous year. London accounted for 82% of the offering value of the 60 IPOs in the industrial goods and services sector. Despite the crisis in the financial services sector, there were 50 investment company IPOs and four of the top 10 by value in Europe fell into this category.

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