As mentioned in an earlier post IPOs reaching Nordic Exchanges – learn from IR apprentices there has been several new listings at Nasdaq OMX Nordic during 2010.

Nasdaq OMX Nordic had no less than three planned IPOs last week; two Swedish wind power companies; O2 and Arise Windpower, and Finnish Tikkurila (Commodity Chemicals). Although, a debacle referring to O2s financials and long term prognosis led to a last minute withdrawal. As a consequence, Arise managed to go through with their listing, but to a extremely low price.

O2s disastrous IPO follows a negative trend in the Nordic exchange. The Swedish business site E24 recently published an interesting article The escape from the exchange (in Swedish), highlighting the issue. Since the glory days in the early millennium, no less than 159 companies have been delisted from Nasdaq OMX Stockholm (see graphics).

Rob Berick, senior managing director at Dix & Eaton has published an excellent blog post, presenting seven strategies for a successful IPO. One of Rob’s advices is to hire an Investor Relations officer, since it will help you achieve a fairer market valuation. So far this strategy seems to have worked for Finnish Tikkurila (who has an IRO), since the share valuation as gone up 2.52 %, compared to Arise who’s share has declined with 0.47 during the same period. Read Berick’s post here: 7 IR strategies for IPOs

When summarising the first quarter of 2010, my conclusion is that it is still a bear market with very contradictory statistics in the pink papers. Yesterday, Swedish financial paper Dagens Industri reported that the share index for Swedish Industrial companies have risen with more than 100 percent the latest year. Obviously proving that the market has started to recovery, or? The same day, Financial Times published an article that Ireland will launch € 18 bn bad bank loan to cover the leftovers from the financial crisis.

The market is still quite chilled after the winter, let’s hope that the spring comes with optimistic signs of recovery, melting the ice and transforming the bear to a bull.