London made number one on the list of European cities with initial public offerings during the fourth quarter of 2006. London’s Alternative Investment Market recorded 60 IPOs, while the London Stock Exchange confirmed 31 stock market floats in the last quarter. The latest figures show that 2006 was the strongest for European exchanges since 2001, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. In the final three months of 2006 European markets saw 212 new listings. London’s IPOs for the fourth quarter alone grossed 6.9 billion or €10.3 billion, around €2 billion more than the same period in 2005, placing it ahead of rivals in Europe and the United States. “Europe had a record year with 651 IPOs raising €66 billion,” says Tom Troubridge, head of London capital markets group at PwC. “This compared with the US markets, which saw only 224 IPOs raising €36.7 billion, whereas Greater China experienced 137 IPOs, which raised €47.4 billion.”
Recently international companies have started investing in London rather than New York, says Troubridge. The LSE attracted 12 new overseas firms in the last quarter of 2006: four from Russia, two from South Korea and Kazakhstan and one each from Georgia, Australia, Bahrain and Pakistan.