* Buoyant markets encourage issuers to test the water
* Extended UK Easter break narrows IPO window
* Firms to use full-year results as launching pad for IPOs
By Josie Cox and Arno Schuetze
FRANKFURT, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Europe is braced for a flurry
of stock market listings in the next two months as firms use
annual results as launching pads for share sales -- and hope to
complete deals before investors disappear for the Easter break.
Issuers are keen to take advantage of buoyant and relatively
stable stock markets, bankers say, and -- with an extended
holiday looming -- they are rushing to launch their initial
public offerings (IPOs) in the next few weeks.
As well as the long Easter weekend across much of Europe, in
Britain an extra public holiday the following week due to a
royal wedding means there will be just three working days
between Apr. 22 and May 2, with many bankers and investors
taking advantage of the extended break to take a holiday.
March and April were among the busiest months for new
listings last year, with 19 and 14 European IPOs respectively.
"There is always a certain seasonality in the IPO market
because launching off the back of audited year-end financial
statements is a fairly natural way of proceeding," said Craig
Coben, head of equity capital markets (ECM) for EMEA at Bank of
America Merrill Lynch.
"One of the key problems this year is the confluence of
Easter, the May bank holiday and the royal wedding, which will
make for a particularly tight window. You don't want to be
marketing your transactions when investors are on holiday."
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For a factbox on the EMEA IPO pipeline, see []
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OUT OF THE STARTING BLOCKS
Bankers say the line-up of expected offerings spans a wide
range of geographies, sectors and market caps.
Among those already under way are a $2.4 billion Copenhagen
offering from Danish outsourcing firm ISS, due to be completed
next month, while French media group Lagardere <LAGA.PA> plans
to float its minority stake in pay-TV channel Canal+ by April.
[] []
Others widely tipped to launch in the coming weeks include
commodities trading giant Glencore, which could be London's
biggest-ever IPO, and a float of container shipping group
Hapag-Lloyd [] by Germany's TUI AG <TUIGn.DE>.
[]
Belgian banking and insurance group KBC's <KBC.BR> planned
float of Czech unit CSOB is also in the works. []
Although the first half of this month saw a string of pulled
or drastically downsized listings by Russian firms, investors
blamed too-high valuations rather than market conditions, and
several other European listings have proved successful.
A resurgence in investor confidence and improved liquidity
as the impact of the sovereign debt crisis wanes both point to
an increase in the number of listings coming to market before
Easter, said Herbert Harrer of global law firm Linklaters.
These favourable conditions may not last all year, however,
prompting some to insist that now is the time to act.
"Whoever is in the starting blocks for an IPO should get
going now -- the development of CDS spreads shows that fear is
returning and markets may not be open forever," said Andreas
Bernstorff, who oversees Citi's ECM business in Germany where as
many as 20 IPOs are expected this year -- a level not seen since
before the financial crisis.
With so many deals trying to get away before Easter, the
glut of several bookbuilds running along side each other could
mean some struggle to attract investor interest and get pulled,
one London-based equity capital markets banker said.
But others maintain demand is there for the right deal.
"There is capacity. The market conditions are there, the
liquidity is there. The challenge is positioning the equity
story," said Coben.
"Investors will support issues if they have a reasonable
yield, reasonable growth prospects and they are fairly priced."
(Additional reporting by Alexander Huebner, Kerstin Leitel and
Kathrin Jones in Frankfurt and Kylie MacLellan in London;
Writing by Kylie MacLellan; Editing by Hans Peters)
