Cobalt Holdings Abandons London IPO Amid Investor Demand Issues

(Reuters) -Metals investor Cobalt Holdings said on Wednesday that it would not proceed with its planned initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange, ending hopes for what could have been the largest listing in the UK capital since early 2024.

The company declined to specify the reasons for dropping its listing plans days after it was priced at $2.56 per share.

However, one person with knowledge of the process said that the process was halted as a result of lack of investor demand. The person was speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The about $230 million market debut would have been London's largest since Air Astana's listing in February 2024.

London has struggled to attract new listings, prompting reforms last year to make it more competitive with New York and the European Union after Brexit.

Several London-listed firms in recent years have also moved their primary listing to New York or picked Europe for IPOs, where they believe they can fetch better valuations.

Unilever chose Amsterdam as the primary listing for its ice cream business Ben & Jerry's in February while online fast-fashion retailer Shein turned to Hong Kong for its IPO, Reuters reported last week.

Glencore and affiliates of investment firm Anchorage Structured Commodities Advisor had agreed to buy about 20.5% of the shares to be offered in Cobalt's IPO when it was first announced in early May.

Cobalt, which holds physical cobalt and has a contract to buy from Glencore, had plans to use the majority of the IPO proceeds to buy an initial 6,000 metric tons of the key battery metal, worth around $200 million, from the global miner.

(Reporting by Prerna Bedi in Bengaluru and Charlie Conchie; Editing by Mohammed Safi Shamsi and Marguerita Choy)