12 more firms queuing up to go public
View(s):At least 12 private companies and family-owned businesses including Abans PLC, Lanka Credit and Business Finance Ltd (LCB Finance), Co-Operative Insurance and Hela Clothing will go public on the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) this year.
All the promotion by the CSE and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to encourage companies to list has yielded results with these companies gearing for Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) this year, capital market officials told the Business Times.
Amongst these companies Co-Operative Insurance on Tuesday announced their plans to go for an IPO while apparel maker, Hela Clothing has said it will go public to raise capital for access into North Africa and the growth of its East African operations. LCB Finance has started the listing process through its advisors to the listing, NDB Investment Bank.
This is on the back of four IPOs already done so far for the year including WindForce Ltd, Chrissworld Ltd, Prime Lands Residencies and JAT Holdings.
Officials said that some prominent family firms are also in line to list. They said that the novel risk management system, Delivery vs. Payment (DVP) for stock market transactions will bolster foreign investor confidence in the coming months which will help to attract more companies to go public in the CSE. When it was launched on Monday, the CSE experienced a few bumps such as the pre-open session delays which it attributed to one broker system vendor having technical difficulties in connecting to the exchange.
Launching the second segment of the Multi Currency Board by the CSE to facilitate local companies to raise capital in foreign currency will increase the attractiveness of CSE’s trading platform by potentially boosting trading and enhancing liquidity in foreign-currency denominated securities by local firms, analysts said.