Some waves take a while to arrive. Rewind to February and the London Stock Exchange chief, Julia Hoggett, was telling everyone to brace for a deluge of UK floats.
Maybe surfing’s not her thing because the wave has turned out to be a ripple. Far from hanging ten (or more), the UK has seen just four IPOs where the size of the offer topped £30 million. First, February’s listing of the Kazakhstan airline, Air Astana, which was basically a ploy for BAE Systems, its 49 per cent owner, to sell down its stake — and where the global depositary receipts listed here are now down 28 per cent.
Then, June’s double act of Advanced Oxygen Therapy Inc and Raspberry Pi: the flatlining former outfit