Australia's CHAMP Drilling to List on London Bourse

Reuters –  Australia 's CHAMP Private Equity said it plans to bypass the local share market to list Shelf Drilling Ltd, the company it formed 16 months ago to run $1 billion worth of shallow water oil rigs, on the London Stock Exchange in May.

"We're in the process of moving for a listing of that business on the London Stock Exchange hopefully in mid-May," Nathaniel Childres , CHAMP managing director, told an Asian Venture Capital Journal conference on Friday.

Dubai -headquartered Shelf, which CHAMP set up in 2012 to buy 38 shallow-water drilling rigs from New York and Zurich -listed oil driller Transocean Ltd , had already produced "a very, very strong financial return", Childres said.

Childres did not give a reason for pursuing a listing in the U.K. instead of Australia and did not say how much Shelf hoped to raise via an initial public offer.

The planned float comes as private equity firms look to capitalise on an improvement in the market for initial public offerings.

"The equity market's definitely very strong at the moment and that's definitely putting a window around IPOs," Pacific Equity Partners Managing Director Tony Duthie told the conference.

Source: Reuters