German wind turbine maker Senvion made a lacklustre stock market debut on Wednesday but breathed some life into Europe's initial public offering (IPO) market, which has seen very little business this year due to jittery trading. Senvion shares started trading at 16 euros, above their 15.75 euro a share issue price, but then dropped to trade at 15.65 euros by 1051 GMT. After initially cancelling the IPO on weak investor demand last week, Senvion's private equity owners relaunched the transaction on Monday but sold fewer shares and at a lower price than initially planned.
Books for the share sale worth 294 million euros ($329 million) were almost four times subscribed, people familiar with the deal said. The flotation valued the company at 1 billion euros.
Europe has seen only a few IPOs this year as a market rout has kept investors from selling stock in other companies - potentially with losses - to generate cash for investments in companies with no track record as listed groups.
From January 1 to March 18, the total value of European IPOs was down 81 percent, while the number of new issues fell to 19 from 45 in the year-earlier period, according to Thomson Reuters data.