If the Board of New Look decided to cancel their plans to bring the fashion retailer in the UK market, it marks the third time this week that a private equity firm has seen its hopes dashed for a way out. The board of New Look, which is backed by Apax Partners and Permira Advisers, will meet Friday to decide whether to proceed with its planned initial public offering, Reuters reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
New Look, whose founder, Tom Singh, also has a stake in the company, said this month it hoped to raise 650 million pounds ($ 1 billion) in an initial public offering to reduce debt.
If private capital owners are removed from the IPO, would meet with his U.S. rival Blackstone Group, which saw its IPO ambitions of two investments this week lag.
On Thursday, the theme park operator Merlin Entertainments, backed by Blackstone, said he had no short term plans to sell shares, dampening expectations of an initial public offering that was reportedly in the planning stages.
On Wednesday, the group of Travelport travel services – which like Merlin is backed by Blackstone – canceled plans for a list of 1.8 billion U.S. dollars, despite reducing the price of the shares by a quarter.
The rock IPO market is not limited to private equity-backed companies. A series of IPOs from other participation Belgian, British and German companies were also eliminated this week.
According to the business editor of the BBC, Robert Peston, the problem of getting these IPOs in the soil due to the fact that “large pension funds, insurers and other institutions that care for our money seem to have wised up that if capital is private sale, not as an act of philanthropy. ”
These investors, writes on his blog, “has worked for you once we have private equity firms over a barrel – that most privately owned businesses are loaded to the brim with the debt to be refinanced in the coming months and years, a new world where debt is no longer cheap or easy to obtain. “
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