Equity capital markets: Jumbo IPOs stand up to their worst enemy

With big declines and huge daily swings, stock markets around the world looked even less welcoming to new issuers in March than they had for much of the year, during which time companies fearful of a cold reception had withdrawn or postponed more than $20.5 billion-worth of deals.

The S&P 500 is down about 7.5% year to date, the Dow Jones EuroStoxx 50 17.5% and the Hang Seng 25%.

Despite the extreme market conditions, however, investors rolled out the welcome mat to greet record-breaking deals from Visa, China Railway Construction Company (CRCC) and Société Générale.

In Asia, CRCC’s $5.4 billion IPO attracted more than $68 billion-worth of orders from retail investors alone, surpassing the $57.4 billion record set by Chinese internet portal Alibaba last November. The institutional portion of the book was more than 60 times covered and several investors came in with single orders larger than $1 billion.

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