Good morning,

A perfect way to top off an annus horribilis in IPOs.

On Thursday, we received word that the proposed float of UK cannabis producer Dragonflyhad been cancelled. No reason was given – just that its application for admission had been rejected by the ASX and the funds would be returned to investors.

We contacted the exchange. It said it doesn’t comment on individual listing applications but pointed us to its latest quarterly compliance report, which provides high-level reasons why it’s declined listing applications (anonymised, of course).

These include things such as “unsatisfactory dealings” through the admission process, concerns about “unproven” business models, and an entity’s “failure to inform ASX about certain information relevant to a director’s good fame and character”. How cryptic.

This was Dragonfly’s second run at the ASX, but it’s far from the only one to have its IPO attempt aborted (though not by the exchange itself). Here’s the list of companies that had been expected to list this year – Virgin Australia, Redox, MolyCop, Mason Stevens, Mondiale VGL, Cuscal, Nido and Tasmea – all of which had appointed bankers and done the rounds with investors. Only two made it, and most have punted their IPO ambitions to our January pipeline stories.

The effective closure of the IPO market across the globe has also caused headaches for private equity firms looking for the exit, Preqin noted on Wednesday, putting out some sobering numbers:

“In the first nine months of 2023, there were 82 private equity-backed IPOs [globally], compared with 135 in the whole of 2022, a far cry from the 392 in 2021 when the market was booming. This has caused overall exit activity to decline, curbing the amount of capital that LPs have to redeploy.”

As Chanticleer columnist Anthony Macdonald writes, there are two reasons why it has been so quiet: market conditions and price. Signals from the US Federal Reserve that it’s prepping to cut rates next year have everyone excited that conditions are normalising and activity will start to pick up again in the new year. Here’s hoping.

See you again in 2024,

• Pension, sovereign wealth funds pile into TEG’s $1.1b dividend recap
• BGH Capital to acquire Waterman Capital’s IT biz Fusion5
• We’re voting against Allkem’s $16b merger with Livent, Ausbil says
• Pinnacle-backed wealth platform OpenInvest finds a white knight
• Medical device company CathRx gathers fresh funds

• NAB, Pacific Equity Partners and Jarden strike $700m NZ wealth deal, writes Jemima Whyte

Click here for the latest equity market wrap.