Sydney : QR Ltd, Australia's largest transporter of coal by rail, will list shares in Sydney in the fourth quarter of this year as part of its planned A$3 billion (Dh9.99 billion) initial public offering.
The share sale, the biggest since Myer Holdings Ltd went public in November, will include the coal rail network and trains, chief executive Lance Hockridge said in an interview with ABC television on Saturday. The company is owned by the Queensland state government.
Initial public offerings are forecast to pick up this year after slumping to a 16-year low in 2009, Simon Cox, head of equity capital markets syndication at UBS AG, said in December. Myer, a department-store chain, raised $1.9 billion in its IPO. Australia's economy is strengthening faster than growth in other nations, Treasurer Wayne Swan said on Saturday.
"We have continued recovery happening in the global environment and China is becoming much more positive about the prospects for its economy," said Craig James, a senior economist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia. "Australia is very much in the hands of China. Most things are falling in place for our market, a lot of the hurdles are out of the road."
Queensland, the third-most-populous Australian state, is selling assets to prop up finances after the recession crimped government revenue. Premier Anna Bligh said in December she would put other assets up for sale in the next two years, including a road network, a coal terminal and a port.
QR won a A$2 billion contract to transport coal from Xstrata Plc's mines in Queensland to ports, Bligh said in December. The company hauled 250 million metric tonnes of Australian exports last year, Hockridge said on Saturday.
