The London Stock Exchange is seeing companies queuing up to float and is looking at ways to widen the investor base open to them if it succeeds in its take-over of Toronto exchange owner TMX Group. "Our pipeline is extremely strong," Tracey Pierce, director of equity primary markets at the London Stock Exchange Group told Reuters on Monday.
-- Large number of Russian, Indian firms planning London IPOs
Global listings got off to a record start in 2011, boosted by buoyant stock markets and improved investor interest and despite some volatility due to unrest in North Africa and the Middle East, many firms are eager to test the market.
While the firms looking to list in London come from a broad range of sectors, natural resources and infrastructure firms, particularly from emerging markets, are set to be the dominant source of issuance, Pierce added.
Natural resources listings, already a strength for the LSE, is an area of dominance likely to be cemented by its proposed acquisition of the owner of the Toronto Stock Exchange, announced last month. Exchanges are scrambling to join forces in an effort to compete with lower-cost electronic trading platforms which have threatened their traditional dominance of key financial centres.
Pierce, a former banker with HSBC, said a combination of the London and Toronto exchanges could look to help companies float in both centres without having to go through the traditional dual listing process. "You could envisage ... in the future maybe having a co-listing option where we can facilitate a dual listing within the group on those two markets," she said during an interview in her glass fronted office at the group's London headquarters.
The LSE is also looking to attract more Mongolian companies to list in London, through an agreement signed with the Mongolian stock exchange last month. The Mongolian government's up to $5 billion IPO of the Tavan Tolgoi coal field, the world's largest untapped coking coal deposit, is one of those London is looking to attract.
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