It’s been a poor year for initial public offerings (IPOs). The value of flotations in the first three quarters of 2016 totalled $82.5bn worldwide, compared with $190bn at this stage in 2014 and $123bn in 2015.
In Britain, the value of new listings is down 60%, compared with 45% in the US and Europe, says the FT’s Gavin Jackson.
It’s been an unusually volatile and uncertain year, kicking off with January’s jitters over Chinese growth, but the main theme has been geopolitical uncertainty. Brexit and the US election have discouraged new listings. Still, nerves may be settling: IPOs rose in September.
Viewpoint
It’s election season… time for partisans to pose as economists and strategists in order to explain how much the markets support their favourite candidate… [but] Mr. Market… isn’t especially concerned with politics… I don’t want to suggest that presidents are irrelevant to markets and the economy; their actions can and do affect interest rates, and commodity and equity prices. A well-designed stimulus can help blunt the harm of a recession, while policy blunders such as waging unnecessary wars… will affect markets. But during the ordinary course of business, a president isn’t usually an especially important market-moving agent.
Barry Ritholtz, Bloomberg Views