Yahoo Finance Another company delays IPO on the London Stock Exchange
The African Export-Import Bank on Tuesday said it was delaying its listing on the London Stock Exchange, blaming “unfavourable market conditions”.
The move, which the bank confirmed would be going ahead only two weeks ago, comes amid increasing fears that Brexit uncertainty has dented the appeal of listing in London.
There have been 29 IPOs on the London Stock Exchange so far this year, compared with 55 in total last year.
And while London is still the dominant force in European equity finance, it is trailing New York when it comes to trading volumes and overall number of listings.
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The third quarter of the year saw the lowest number of IPOs in the UK in a decade, according to consultancy firm EY.
The African Export-Import Bank, a trade finance group for Africa, was created in 1993 under the auspices of the African Development Bank.
Also referred to as Afreximbank, it was hoping to raise $250m from its IPO on the London Stock exchange, based on the issuance of global depository receipts, a type of certificate used as an alternative to actual company shares.
It said on Tuesday that it would delay the listing even though it had received “significant” interest from investors.
“The bank will continue to monitor the markets to find the appropriate window to launch its offering,” it said.
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It was hoping to use the proceeds to expand its operations amid a growing trade market in Africa.
Earlier this month, Kaspi.kz, a Kazakh fintech firm, blamed “unfavourable and uncertain market conditions” for delaying its own $5bn listing in London.
The IPO had only been announced in September and would been the largest by a firm from a central Asian country in around a decade.
“To see such low levels of IPO activity we must rewind back 10 years to the third quarter of 2009, when the UK was just starting to pull out of recession,” said EY UK IPO leader Scott McCubbin earlier this month.
