Sydney, 24 August 2009: Renewed confidence in Australia's capital markets is being reflected in strong levels of activity at national law firm Clayton Utz which is advising on a number of Initial Public Offerings, major capital raisings and major share sales that have or will soon come to market.
Recently announced transactions on which the Equity Capital Markets team at Clayton Utz has advised include: the IPO of carsales.com Limited, Goodman Group's $1.8 billion capital raising, Bank of Queensland's $340 million capital raising, Grange Resources' $167 million capital raising, Stockland Group's $2 billion placement, FKP's $324 million capital raising, Transpacific Industries' $800 million+ capital raising and Asciano Group's landmark $2.35 billion raising.
Commenting on this recent activity, the head of Clayton Utz' Equity Capital Markets practice, Greg James, said: "It is great to see progressive levels of confidence returning to the Australian capital markets, which started some months ago with the wave of secondary raisings by the banks and large caps. Australian capital markets were among the first globally to re-ignite in this way and the volume of capital raised in this period was quite remarkable.
"The resurgence of confidence has heralded the return of the IPO market and we'd expect to see a spate of overdue private equity exits follow this route now that conditions are more favourable. We anticipate a first salvo of IPOs squeezing into the run-up to Christmas and then, depending on market response, a re-engagement of the IPO market commencing in earnest early in the new year."
Mr James also noted the spread of capital raising activity around the country. "We've seen major offers coming out of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. Our national capability is positioning us very well to advise on the next wave of IPOs around the country - a number of which are already in our pipeline."