On Wednesday, Ithaca Energy shares dropped on their London debut after the independent oil and gas producer defied volatile markets to deliver Europe’s fifth biggest and Britain’s largest initial public offering (IPO) this year.

The shares opened 2 per cent below the 250 pence per share issue price and dropped to a low of 240.05 pence. At 1046 GMT, they were down 2.8 per cent at 243.10 pence. Meanwhile. The pan-European STOXX 600 was down 0.5 per cent, and an index of European oil and gas stocks tumbled 1 per cent.

The IPO is priced at the bottom of the expected price range. It gave the firm an initial valuation of 2.45 billion pounds (USD 2.83 billion). The top of the original price range would have valued it at 3.1 billion pounds.

Notably, Ithaca Energy raised proceeds of 288 million pounds this year, with global IPO proceeds down more than 70 per cent compared to last year.

With a free float of 12 per cent, Ithaca is the first major company to take advantage of new London listing rules implemented at the end of 2021 that reduced the proportion of shares an issuer is needed to have in public hands from 25 per cent to 10 per cent.