While the Philippine Stock Exchange logged some hefty equity placements last year, all of the initial public offerings were in the small- to mid-cap space. There were a total of five IPOs during 2014 with an average size of just $63 million.
Foreign investors don’t usually play in this end of the market and most of the deals in 2014 were marketed and allocated solely to domestic buyers. Only SSI Group, a high-end retailer, had a portion of its shares distributed to offshore investors.
“Anything with a market cap of less than $200 million isn’t covered by the foreign brokers,” said Ed Francisco, head of BDO...