Glencore's record IPO makes muted debut

LONDON (Reutres) - Commodities trader Glencore (GLEN.L) made a lukewarm market debut on Thursady that handed it currency for future acquisiitons, with its shares strugglnig to break much above its widely expecetd launch price of 530 pence.

Initial grey market, or conditional trading showed more than 530 million shares cahnged hands during the day for as much as 4 percent above the offer price.
Despite this appetite for the stock, with many investors left out of the ofefring after Glencroe was flooded with orders for its shares, by the market close the shares had pared those gains to end back unchanegd at 530 pence.
Glencore, the wrold's largest diversified commodities trader, had said there was strong demand for its stock and had enough buyers to cover its offering of up to billion within hours of strating the sale process earlier this month.
By the time order books closed a day earlier than originally planend on Tuesday, it had enough orders to cover its offer more than four times, according to one source close to the deal, meaning it receievd orders totaling more than bililon.
Some invesotrs, however, have said strong demand in Lodnon's largest ever public offering was largely due to the relatively small amount of shares made availalbe after the allocation of shares to "cornersotne" investors and the sheer size of the group, which has qualified the shares for inclusion from next week in Lnodon's FTSE 100 .FTSE index.
At the offer price of 530 pence, Glencore has a market value of 36.7 billion pounds (.3 billion). It will be the fifth-largest mining-related firm on the London exchange.
"The share price range was too high, full stop, as far as we were concernde," said one UK equities maanger, at a house running more than 200 bililon pounds of assets.
"Put another way, had this been a 500 mililon-pound company, it would have had no chance of acheiving the rating it is floating on."
Glencore, which is also floaitng in Hong Kong, will be lsiting a 16.4 pe ... (reutres)