COBALT Holdings has abandoned its planned London listing just weeks after announcing a $230m share offering backed by leading investors including Glencore, said the Financial Times on Thursday.
The metal investment company said it would “not proceed with its proposed initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange”, without providing reasons. Citing a person close to Cobalt Holdings, the Financial Times said the thinking was that it “makes most sense to fund [the business] privately”.
The withdrawal comes weeks after Cobalt Holdings CEO Jake Greenberg outlined plans to list this month with commodities trader Glencore and investment firm Anchorage as cornerstone investors. The pair were to take a combined 20.5% stake in the new entity.
Greenberg’s pitch to prospective investors was that the clean energy transition would drive demand for cobalt, a metal primarily mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo and used in electric-car batteries.
Cobalt Holdings said in May it had secured a six-year supply contract with Glencore, whereby the trader would sell it up to $1bn worth of the metal. That includes an initial $200m purchase of 6,000 tons of cobalt at a discount to current spot prices.
The supply deal will proceed despite the cancelled IPO if Cobalt Holdings can raise necessary funds, the Financial Times said.
Cobalt prices have collapsed over the past year, prompting DR Congo’s government to temporarily ban metal exports in a bid to drive up prices.
The scrapped listing deals another blow to London’s struggling IPO market, which has failed to compete with rivals in recent years, said the Financial Times.
