PE worth $2.5 billion caught in IPO quarantine

About $2.5 billion worth of private equity exits some involving Blackstone, the world’s largest alternate asset manager, blue-blooded Wall Street investor Warburg Pincus, Silicon Valley poster boy Sequoia Capital, or buyout group Advent International are on hold after over two dozen Indian companies postponed their public issue plans amid sharp fall in the equity markets caused by the Covid-19 outbreak. “First, companies will have to reopen post-lockdown and it may take some time for them to return to normal operations,” said Ravi Sardana, senior EVP – Investment, ICICI Securities. “At this point, it is difficult to predict demand and fix the valuation. Issuers will have to wait for confidence to return to the market.”