Glencore-backed Cobalt Holdings scraps planned London listing

Stay informed with free updates

Cobalt Holdings has scrapped its move to list in London, just weeks after announcing a planned $230mn share offering backed by leading investors including Glencore.

The metal investment company said on Wednesday that it would “not proceed with its proposed initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange”, without giving reasons. A person close to Cobalt Holdings said the thinking was that it “makes most sense to fund [the business] privately”. The company declined to comment further.

The retreat comes weeks after Cobalt Holdings, led by chief executive Jake Greenberg, outlined plans to list this month, with commodities trader Glencore and investment firm Anchorage as its cornerstone investors. The pair were to take a combined 20.5 per cent of the new entity.

The scrapping of the listing is a blow to the faltering London IPO market, which has struggled to compete with rivals in recent years.

Cobalt Holdings had planned to raise $230mn from a flotation modelled on the London-listed investment company Yellow Cake, which buys and holds the uranium used to make nuclear reactor fuel.

Greenberg’s pitch to prospective investors was that the clean energy transition would drive up demand for cobalt, a metal that is primarily mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo and used in electric-car batteries.

Cobalt Holdings said in May that it had penned a six-year supply contract with Glencore, in which the trader would sell it up to $1bn worth of the metal. That would include an initial $200mn purchase of 6,000 tonnes of cobalt at a discount to the current spot price.

The supply deal will still go ahead in spite of the cancelled IPO if Cobalt Holdings can raise the funds needed, the Financial Times understands.

Glencore declined to comment.

Prices of cobalt have collapsed in the past year, which prompted the government of DR Congo to temporarily ban the export of the metal in a bid to drive up its price.