The cancellation comes after investment institutions demanded a 40% cut in the offering price.
Private equity firm Apax Partners, headed in Israel by Zehavit Cohen, has cancelled the IPO planned for e-commerce and price comparison company Zap on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. The decision was made because of market conditions, two days after the company published a second draft prospectus for an equity offering.
Apax Partners and the offering underwriters, headed by Leumi Partners, held talks last week with several investment institutions in an attempt to reach understandings on a price that would enable the offering to go ahead, but the talks did not bear fruit. As far as is known, the institutions demanded a deep cut in the offering price for Zap of some 40%, which would have given the company a valuation of about NIS 400 million, which compares with an valuation of NIS 650-700 million at which Apax originally sought to make the offering, more than four times the valuation at which it acquired Zap in 2015.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 12, 2018
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Zehavit Cohen photo: Rami Zarnegar