Pricing and quality matter for all new listings

THE market for new listings in Singapore has undergone a fundamental shift over the past 30 years. For initial public offerings (IPOs), the 1990s prioritised Singapore firms, the rationale being that IPOs were primarily capital-raising exercises to provide much-needed funding for promising companies to grow.

This led to well-known, home-grown firms such as Singtel, Creative Technology, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing and NatSteel Electronics listing to much publicity, with most enjoying impressive post-listing performance. Recall, for example, that Singtel’s debut in October 1993 sparked the market’s first “super bull run’’.

The 1990s view of IPOs dovetailed with the idea of the stock market as an economy’s link with the future, channelling scarce resources into their most productive uses, thus functioning as a tool to benefit Singapore’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).