PEXA shelves bold public offering

PROPERTY Exchange Australia, an online property settlements firm owned by Australia’s big banks and local governments, has shelved its initial public offering due to market volatility.

The IPO’s managers had said a consortium led by Macquarie Group and including the big four banks was seeking to raise as much as $ 862 million in what would have been Australia’s biggest listing for a software and internet services firm.

PEXA’s shares were expected to start trading on November 19 but the bookbuilding for institutional investors was paused after investors pulled their orders on Thursday, a source familiar with the company’s plans said.

“The extreme market conditions of the last 24 hours paused the bookbuild process,” the source said. “The board and its advisers are going to continue to evaluate market conditions regarding an IPO option.”

Asian shares plunged on Thursday as hundreds of billions of dollars haemorrhaged from global markets after a rout in tech stocks inflicted the largest daily decline on Wall Street since 2011, wiping out all its gains for the year.

At the top of the range, PEXA’s IPO would have been Australia’s third- largest this year and would value the company at $ 2.2 billion.

Earlier this week, shares in Coronado Global Resources , Australia’s biggest coal mining listing since 2012, fell as much as 8.5 per cent below its float price on the first day of trading, even after being priced at the bottom end of an offered range.