KARACHI: For the first time in the last decade, no company has offered its shares to public though local bourses since January 2009. Therefore, no Initial Public Offering (IPO) has hit the market in the first half of the year 2009. “This is depicting a worst situation from which Pakistan capital markets are passing through these days”, said M Sohail at Topline Securities. An unwarranted closure of the market for about 100 days (from Aug 28 to December 15, 2008), selling by foreigners and weak economic fundamentals caused issuers to delay their offerings. Therefore, despite higher lending rates, new companies were not able to raise funds through initial offerings at the local exchanges. As a result Karachi exchange witnessed no public offerings during the last six months, a key to the development of any stock market, he attributed in a research report. The period of 1990s was a booming period for the IPOs when on an average 30 offerings were made in a typical year thereby causing the listed firms at KSE to increase from 487 in 1990 to 767 in 2000. On the contrary, the average offering a year has now fallen to 10 (approximately). And as per trend at least five IPOs should come to the market in the last six months, but not a single firm has offered their shares (excluding right shares) to the public due to the deteriorating market conditions. Due to lesser offerings in the last 10 years coupled with mergers and acquisition, listed firms in Pakistan has fallen to just one per cent of the total registered companies, he maintained. In the post crisis period, local equity markets are suffering from four main issues; weak economic fundamentals, security concerns, continuous foreign selling and the absence of any leverage product. Once the situation improves, new IPOs will come to the market gradually, he foresaw and added that the government, however, can play a key role in the IPO market by offering shares of public owned companies. This will not only increase the free float but will also provide much-needed depth to the Pakistani stock markets.