|
Liberty Surf rides IPO wave
|
 |
March 16, 2000: 7:33 a.m. ET
France's top Web service provider surges in public debut in Paris
|
LONDON (CNNfn) - Liberty Surf, the first French Internet service provider to go public, surged on the Paris bourse Thursday after an initial public offer that attracted enough orders for shares to sell the available stock more than 60 times.
Shares of Liberty Surf, France's leading free Web-access provider, rose 43 percent to 58.60 euros from an offer price of 41 euros. Trading in the shares was earlier halted limit-up shortly after transactions opened. The stock resumed its ascent when trade reopened, soaring at one point as high as 79 euros, a 93 percent gain.
The company's founders, French tycoon Bernard Arnault's Europ@web and British retailer Kingfisher (KGF), sold 12.6 million Liberty Surf shares on the so-called monthly-settlement market, rather than the Nouveau Marché, the more commonly used forum for public offerings of high-growth technology stocks.
The 41-euro offering price, at the upper end of the previously suggested range, placed a value of around 3.52 billion euros ($3.4 billion) on Liberty Surf. The private investor section of the share sale was oversubscribed 67 times, while the offer to financial institutions was sold out 60 times over. The stock's debut was delayed by an imbalance of buy orders on the monthly-settlement market.
Europ@web and Kingfisher each invested 50 million euros in the firm and will both retain 40 percent stakes. Arnault is chairman and chief executive officer of French luxury-products group LVMH.
LVMH (PMC) shares were up 0.4 percent at 436.6 euros in Paris Thursday, while Kingfisher (KGF) stock was unchanged in London at 493 pence.
The Liberty Surf float comes just two days after lastminute.com, a British website that lets users place short-notice orders for travel, gifts and entertainment, leapt in its debut in London, underscoring investors' fierce appetite for almost anything with a dot-com tag. 
|
|
|
|
|
|
Liberty Surf
|
Note: Pages will open in a new browser window
External sites are not endorsed by CNNmoney
|
|
|
|
 |
|
