Issuer: Yell Group
Amount: £1.14 billion
Launched: July 1 2003
Bookrunners: Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs
Last month, Apax Partners and Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst finally
managed to send their problem child Yell to market. After fishing
around for a few days bookrunners Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs
found there were plenty of institutional investors interested in
the UK telephone directory provider's stock and launched the IPO on
July 1.
The initial deal size was £850 million but investor demand took
this to £1.14 billion ($1.8 billion), plus the greenshoe. Around
38% came from new shares and 62% from secondary shares. The deal
was priced in the top half of the 250p to 300p range at 285p in
just 10 days, rather than the usual six weeks. The bookrunners were
able to accomplish this because...
