(January 6 – 16:20 ET) – A new PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of Canada’s principal stock exchanges shows that the demutualization of this country’s insurance companies, not e-commerce, was the most important factor for the markets and investors in 1999.
“Despite what people might perceive as a result of the heavy coverage that e-commerce companies received over the year, barely 0.5 per cent of the total value of all Canadian offerings was raised by the single, pure, so-called `dot.com offering’ in this country in 1999. That was an Initial Public Offering (IPO) from Chapters Online Inc., worth about $45 million,” according to Eric Slavens at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Compared to that, the total value of the partial demutualization of Canada’s insurance sector in 1999 was about $3.8 billion, says PwC. Demutualization represented about 65 per cent of the value of Initial Public Offerings in the Financial Services sector, and about half the value of all of theofferings in Financial Services.
“The dot.com phenomenon that was such a significant factor for U.S. markets in 1999 was essentially a small ripple in Canadian markets,” says Slavens.
The Survey of Public Offerings in Canada, 1999 shows that 1999 was an improvement over what Slavens describes as “a lacklustre 1998.” In 1999, the total value of all successful public offerings rose 55.9 per cent to $26.7 billion from the markets’ 1998 total of $17.1 billion. The markets recorded 377 successful issues, a 36.6 per cent gain over 276 issues in all of 1998.
While e-commerce companies were not a major factor, the survey shows that the Technology & Media sector led both in value and number on the major markets with over $7.9 billion raised in 93 completed offerings. However, the sector was dominated by offerings from established companies including Seagram Co. Ltd. and Celestica Inc.
-IE Staff