Dubai-based Tristar, the oil logistics solutions provider, and Nigeria’s Dangote Cement are both still understood to be considering London listings before the end of the year.
Chinese firm SDIC Power, which is exploring a potential global depositary receipt listing, could join them in a deal that would make it the second company to list in the UK capital under the London-Shanghai Stock Connect scheme.
“We got a lot of the UK deals done earlier in the year when we could,” said a London-based syndicate banker. “London listings are now skewed more towards international companies looking to list in London [but]... it won’t be a super high number.”
London listing volumes this year have already been helped by cross-border listings.
Dubai-based payments company Network International priced a £1bn IPO in London in April, which then soared in trading.
Abu-Dhabi payments company Finablr and Airtel Africa, which operates telecommunications and mobile payments services on the continent but is based in London, also did UK listings.
Sources speaking to GlobalCapital throughout 2019 have backed international IPOs and secondary listings to boost London volumes.
A second ECM banker working on a number of international listings said: “Brexit has less impact on these issuers from outside the UK. We continue to be optimistic about London as a global exchange and there is a lot of global money chasing these international listings.”
To that last point, SDIC Power’s predecessor on the London-Shanghai Stock Connect Scheme may prove something of a bellwether. Huatai Securities, a Chinese brokerage, priced its $1.74bn listing in June. The deal was popular with investors, according to sources close to the transaction, but the turnout was mostly Chinese.
Market participants have been left to wonder if international buying will grow in this market or whether China offshore cash will be the dominant source of investment.
“All these deals are likely to be sizeable and I expect you will continue to need strong Asian demand to do the deal,” said the second banker.