Eurozone Crisis no Dampener for Felda Global IPO, the Largest After Facebook

Eurozone debt crisis and the global market jittery don't seem to have watered down the interest in Felda Global Ventures' (FGV) $3.2 billion (£2bn) Initial Public Offering (IPO), the second largest after the Facebook listing.

The IPO was already oversubscribed 30 times the shares available for the institutional investors despite the sluggish investor interest in the Facebook stocks which is listed in the Nasdaq for $16 billion.

Another billion-dollar IPO in Hong Kong by the UK-based jeweler Graff Diamond had to be scrapped because of the weak market demand and the plans for a Formula One IPO was shelved for the time being.

However, FGV has aroused huge interest from cornerstone investors and other strategic and institutional investors for its 2.19 billion shares at the price range of four to 4.65 Malaysian ringgit (£0.95, $1.47) per share.

The deal would be Malaysia's third biggest IPO on record, behind Petronas Chemicals' $4.8bn IPO in 2010 and that of mobile group Maxis in November 2009, according to Dealogic.

It has already secured investments worth $1 billion from 12 cornerstone investors, including sovereign wealth funds from Singapore and Qatar. The company also has Dutch commodities giant Louis Dreyfus and state governments in Malaysia as the strategic investors.

FGV is expected to list on the Kuala Lumpur stock exchange on 28 June.

Felda Global concentrates on the palm oil business, a widely used ingredient in a variety of goods such as lipsticks, potato chips and biodiesel fuel. It manages nearly 355,864 hectares of palm oil plantations mainly in the eastern state of Pahang.

The company plans to invest nearly half of its IPO proceedings for further plantation acquisitions.

Following the path of Felda, IHH Healthcare Bhd is also planning its $2 billion IPO in the coming months.

The hospital operator is aiming to secure nearly 50 percent of cornerstone investments which so far was successful in securing 40 percent of the investments, according to a Wall Street Journal report quoting sources familiar to the development.

The preliminary filing of the IPO prospectus of IHH is expected on 28 June.