Prudential last night risked becoming the highest profile victim of the dot.com fallout as it admitted it was reviewing the planned £2bn flotation of its Egg banking subsidiary on a daily basis.
It would join the list of flotations and initial public offerings (IPOs) dumped or postponed yesterday as internet and technology companies accepted investor interest was draining away fast.
With the prospectus due this week for the Egg flotation, already half the value estimated three months ago, speculation mounted that the timing of the sale of Egg shares to customers, employees and institutional investors would be delayed from the second week of June.
Amid rumours that the prospectus had been scheduled for publication yesterday, the Pru would only say last night: "No decision has been taken on the exact timing of that announcement. Market conditions are an important factor and the company will continue to examine the situation in light of this".
Among those putting their plans on ice in the teeth of stock market turbulence were Opal Telecom, the third generation telecoms provider, TeleCity, the net infrastructure company, and online games retailer Softwarefirst.com.
Video-on-demand company Video Networks Ltd said it would decide in two weeks whether a flotation will form part of its fundraising plans in the wake of rival Yes Television's abandoned IPO.
Shares in Project Telecom were meant to start trading yesterday but it extended the period for taking orders for its £35m IPO until Friday to win more support.
Opal Telecom said it had received an enthusiatic response from fund managers but had been warned it would be "crazy" to try and push ahead in the current climate of uncertainty.
David Goldie, Opal Telecom's founder, said it could be some months before the market was ready for such a float.
Television company Static 2358 has put its IPO scheme on ice as has Basildon-based Softwarefirst.com whose managing director William Flatau expressed disappointment at the decision to halt a float on Ofex.
"We released our prospectus just before the downturn that has paralysed our marketing and PR effort. Its extremely difficult to achieve a listing even on Ofex in today's market, even though our revenues are up 75% year on year," he explained.
Meanwhile Video Networks said it would take account of Yes's decision on Sunday to pull its initial public offering when it finalised plans for raising hundreds of millions of pounds.
"This and the general market situation has been put into the mix," said chief executive Simon Hochhauser. He believed the company was different from Yes TV, which had far fewer customers and different technology. He hoped the decision by Yes to scrap its IPO at the second attempt might help his own float.
The difficulty of raising money at present has also hit some of the biggest names in Europe. The placement of 10.7m shares in French software and consulting group Cap Gemini, to fund its acquisition of Ernst & Young's consulting arm, was understood to have hit problems yesterday.
Market talk was that the 90% slice of shares allotted to institutional investors was "only just" oversubscribed, by between 1.0 and 1.7 times.
