Stock market jitters over Japan crisis delays Glencore listing

Further blow to equities market as commodity trader is tipped to postpone $60bn April listing

The flotation of commodities trader Glencore, the most talked about London listing of 2011, looks likely to be delayed by Japan's nuclear crisis.

Three sources involved in the flotation said the listing would almost certainly miss its late April deadline by at least a month. Market volatility since the tsunami struck means that Glencore might not achieve close to its $60bn (£37bn) estimated value or shares could unfairly slump on the start of trading.

One source close to Glencore said that the timetable was already tight, and that the Japan crisis was just one of the obstacles to floating in April. The company had not accounted for the Royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, which would mean that "most fund managers would escape London and be on a beach in the Caribbean" when the share sale was due to be launched, he said.

A leading mining banker said that an April flotation was "50:50" at best, though a third source insisted that Glencore was sanguine about when to float. All three said that even if Glencore did postpone, a decision on which could come as early as this week, there was no possibility of the listing being axed permanently.

However, any delay would represent another blow to the European equities market after a week that saw the postponement of two other eagerly anticipated listings.

Denmark-based outsourcing group ISS had planned a $2.5bn share sale in Copenhagen but pulled out 24 hours before trading was due to start on Friday. And French media group Lagardère delayed the 20 per cent share sale of Canal+ France, the pay TV channel. That sale would have valued Canal+ at $1.5bn.

In the US, Chinese e-commerce firm Global Market Group canned a $132m listing on Thursday. Questions have been raised over a number of planned Chinese listings as investors take stock of the crisis in Asia.

On the plus side for Glencore, its one-third stake in FTSE 100 miner Xstrata looks set to soar in value. About 30 per cent of Xstrata's revenue comes from coal, a fuel that is expected to boom as doubts about the future of the nuclear industry rise in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

Shore Capital is one analyst to have tipped Xstrata shares, which rose 4.5p on Friday to close at 1382.5p. This values the company at more than £40bn, so a future merger with Xstrata would create a mining giant to challenge market leader BHP Billiton.

London's FTSE and Japan's Nikkei have struggled since the earthquake. On Friday, the FTSE 100 fell to a three- month low, not helped by continued uncertainty in Libya. The Nikkei hit a five-week low on Friday, closing 1.7 per cent down on the start of the day's trading. But, US stocks rose as investors backed the country's energy companies to pick up any slack in Asia.