Number of IPOs to rise, says Nasdaq

The number of initial public offerings handled by Nasdaq may rise this year, buoyed by strong equity markets and the Federal Reserve’s announcement that it will reduce bond purchases.

Bruce Aust, who oversees listings at the second-largest operator of US stock exchanges, predicted there will be a cluster of IPOs around April and May. There were 126 IPOs at Nasdaq last year, the most since 2007, as economic recovery pushed markets to new records.

“After we went through the financial crisis when markets weren’t as strong, you saw a lot of dual tracking, where companies looked at the M&A route as well as the IPO route,” Mr Aust said yesterday at the DLD conference in Munich for entrepreneurs and technology companies.