Børsnoteringer

Aktienedtur har stoppet nynoteringer

Nedturen på aktiemarkeet har fået 24 firmaer denne måned til at stoppe planer om at gå på børsen - det største tal i mindst et årti.

tøjmærket Tommy Hilfiger Corp., Denmark's Dong Energy A/S, and Chinese department store operator Maoye International Holdings Ltd. are among companies that have withdrawn or postponed sales, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

``Unless we have a fairly dramatic shift, the IPO market is going to be pretty dormant,'' said Chris Kelly, head of the capital markets practice at law firm Jones Day in New York. ``IPO investors don't want to buy into an investment that has a decent likelihood of going down.''

The MSCI World Index fell 14 percent since reaching a record on Oct. 31 as subprime-mortgage defaults sparked a worldwide credit crisis and threatened to send the U.S. economy into recession. The Bloomberg IPO Index, which tracks new stocks in their first year of trading, dropped 9 percent in the past year, while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index declined 6.4 percent.

Mexico, Sweden, France, Poland and Australia are among the more than 40 countries whose benchmark indexes have slumped more than 20 percent from their highs of 2007, the common definition of a bear market. Europe's Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index has tumbled as much as 24 percent from a six-year high on June 1. In the U.S., the S&P 500 dropped 14 percent from its record reached in October.

Apax's Hilfiger

Apax bought Hilfiger in 2005 for $1.6 billion after its red- white-and-blue-splashed clothing lost favor with teenagers. Tommy Hilfiger, which first went public in 1992, had planned to return to the market by listing shares in Amsterdam.

The market decline also derailed the IPO of Dong Energy, which would have been Denmark's biggest in more than a decade, while Maoye cited ``current turmoil in international capital markets'' for its scrapped plans.

Solargiga Energy Holdings Ltd. and SFK Construction Holdings Ltd. canceled Hong Kong IPOs worth as much as a combined HK$3.3 billion ($423 million) after the stock market tumbled, four people familiar with the decisions said today.

In the U.S., the largest deal to get pulled was the $345 million sale of Imperium Renewables Inc., a Seattle-based biodiesel producer, which withdrew due to ``unfavorable market conditions.''

The VDAX-New, a gauge of European stock-market volatility derived from prices paid for options on Germany's DAX Index, closed Jan. 23 at its highest since May 2003. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, or VIX, derived from prices paid for S&P 500 options, almost tripled in the past year.

Done Deals

The window is still open to go public. So far this year, 50 companies have raised $7 billion in IPOs globally, up from $2.1 billion in 43 issues last year during the same period.

The U.S. IPO market accounts for 41 percent of the global tally, with nine companies having raising $2.9 billion, according to Bloomberg data. Of those, $2.3 billion have been by blank- check companies. Also called special-purpose acquisition companies, the firms don't have operations and are formed to acquire another business. The largest was the $920 million raised by billionaire investor Nelson Peltz for Trian Acquisition I Corp. on Jan. 23.

RiskMetrics Group Inc., which provides corporate governance and risk management products to investors and corporations, gained 36 percent on Jan. 25 after raising $245 million in its IPO.

IPC The Hospitalist Co., the North Hollywood, California- based company that assists hospitals in providing services, raised $83.2 million on Jan. 24. Williams Pipeline Partners LP, the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based operator of natural gas transportation and storage services, raised $325 million on Jan. 17. The shares have fallen about 3 percent since their debut.

Scrapped sales span continents and industries.

Grupo Lamosa SAB, a Mexican real-estate and building- materials company, said last week it would postpone a planned $280 million share sale because of market conditions. Philogen SpA, an Italian company that develops drugs to treat cancer and arthritis, suspended plans for an IPO after stock markets tumbled. Global Green Tech Group Ltd., a Hong Kong-based maker of personal-care products, canceled a planned HK$2.41 billion ($309 million) IPO by unit Bio Beauty Group Ltd. because of ``market conditions.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Hester in New York at ehester@bloomberg.net .