10 Largest IPO Valuations in History

Curious to know which the 10 largest IPO valuations in history were? What was their domicile, their businesses or their valuations?

Entrepreneurs raising money from the capital market by offering equity is one the main pillars of modern day capitalism as we know it. Initial Public Offering (IPO) besides raising capital also increase a company’s reputation and credibility as it brings regulatory scrutiny about its operations and financials. Different countries have different laws governing an IPO. For example, India allows retail investors to subscribe to an IPO while the USA equity markets generally sell equity to institutional investors only. With the growing size of the world economy, the size of the IPOs has also become larger in recent years frequently topping the 10 billion dollar mark, with the largest IPO raising an astonishing $25 billion.

It was surprising to see three of the top four IPOs being those of Chinese companies, each breaking the record IPO valuation of its predecessor. While Visa Inc. was the largest US company to rank on the list, Facebook Inc was the second largest at $16 billion. You can also find which the 20 biggest IPOs in US history were. Most of the largest IPO valuations in history in our list consist of Japanese, Chinese and American names only. This makes sense as these countries are the three biggest economies in the world and you would expect companies from these places to be the biggest in the world as well. Another common threat running through these large IPOs was the sameness in the sectors these belonged to.  Banks, Telecom and Internet companies dominated the list with a couple from other sectors such as payment processing and utilities.

Copyright: argus456 / 123RF Stock Photo

In the list below, we have compiled the largest IPO valuations in history. The largest IPO was that of Alibaba Group Holding in 2014. Though many large IPOs were anticipated in 2015 and 2016, they did not materialize. Snapchat is being rumored to be one of the largest IPOs in the coming year.