Asia-Pacific IPO: WuXi XDC’s HK$4.06bn IPO

Arm’s return to public markets ranked as one of the year’s big capital markets events globally, representing the first US tech IPO of 2023 and the largest US offering in two years. Having taken Arm private in 2016, SoftBank unsuccessfully attempted to sell the business to Nvidia in 2022 before pivoting to a Nasdaq IPO. "What investors discovered … is this was a company that had changed dramatically both in terms of its revenue model, its engagement with customers, the breadth of its services and the growth opportunity," said Tom Swerling,...

The three jumbo secondaries each priced at successively tighter discounts and incrementally higher prices, as GE disposed of its 46% AerCap stake. The stake was a legacy of the 2021 sale of GE’s leasing unit to NYSE-listed AerCap for around US$30bn in cash and stock. Goldman Sachs and Citigroup led the syndicate on all three selldowns, using wall-crossing exercises of one or two days on each occasion to help secure multiple times oversubscription while navigating tight funding windows. The banks "helped us thoughtfully execute the offerings...

In doing so, the Mexican industrial property landlord provided US and international investors with a more liquid way to invest in the nearshoring trend by many multinationals to bring their manufacturing footprint and supply chains closer to the US. June’s US debut, the first by a Mexican company since 2019 and the largest since 2013, saw Vesta sell 14.375m American depository shares at US$31 each. New investors took more than 80% of the offering. "This was a sizeable transaction," said Marcelo Millen, Citigroup’s head of Latin America equity...

In a year of crashing disappointments, Schott was rare in listening to feedback on valuation and being grown up about the discount and structure required for success. That made it one of the few to achieve early coverage throughout the range. "Our team had a very intense dialogue with investors throughout the process where we received granular feedback and were able to create a fan club among global top long-onlys," said Schott Pharma chief financial officer Jens Schulte. The pitch emphasised the benefits of being part of the Schott group, with...

Yet a range of innovative measures and three successful jumbo accelerated bookbuilds allowed a Blackstone-led consortium to do just that in LSEG, owner of IFR. The scene was set in December 2022 with Microsoft and LSEG inking a 10-year relationship to embed the latter's financial data into Microsoft products and access its artificial intelligence tools. Microsoft bought a 4% stake in LSEG for £1.7bn from the consortium as part of the partnership, which eased the overhang slightly, but more importantly gave LSEG management a story to tell that...

Much was made in 2023 of companies opting to list on exchanges away from their country of origin, while ADES was returning home having delisted from the London Stock Exchange in 2021. In addition, the US$1.2bn IPO was the largest ECM transaction of the year in the country and proceeds went towards deleveraging the company to repay acquisition-related debt. A crucial part of the transaction was a need to push local investors away from the typically used trailing 12 months price-to-earnings ratio to instead value the drilling services company...

JPH, which owned 89% of JPB before the share sale, launched the deal on February 27, at a time when the Topix Banks Stock Index had gained more than 20% since Bank of Japan’s surprising policy tweak in December 2022 to relax its yield curve control. JPH offered 25.26% of its banking unit, plus another 3.79% in the greenshoe, in an indicative discount range of 2%–4% to the share price on March 13. The parent had outlined plans to reduce its shareholding to 50% or less by the end of March 2026, but banks were able to calm investors' fears about...