Colombia may end an almost two-year initial public offering drought as companies that balked at going public because of the global recession consider reviving their plans, the president of the stock exchange said.

“The recovery of stock prices globally and the amount of liquidity in Colombia, reflected by the success of corporate bonds, is starting to encourage some companies that shelved plans on the crisis to consider the possibility again,” Bolsa de Valores de Colombia’sJuan Pablo Cordoba said.

Helm Bank SA, formerly known as Banco de Credito, was the last company to have an IPO in Colombia, raising 250 billion pesos ($123 million) in December 2007. State-controlled oil company Ecopetrol SA raised $2.7 billion when it sold a 20 percent stake that September. Prospective issuers were deterred last year as Colombia’s IGBC index slumped 29 percent amid the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression.

A “limited” number of companies have restored their interest as confidence returns to markets, Cordoba said in a phone interview yesterday. The IGBC is up 38 percent this year and companies have sold a record $5 billion in bonds, he said.

Biomax Biocombustibles SA, a Bogota-based fuel distributor, plans an IPO early next year to finance expansion, Chief Executive Officer Ramiro Hernando Sanchez said today in a telephone interview.

Colombia’s central bank chief Jose Dario Uribe said last month that the seven straight interest-rate cuts before July’s pause will bolster demand and underpin a second-half rebound in South America’s fourth-biggest economy after its longest slump since 1999.

Regional Rebound

Share sales are rebounding in Latin America as markets rally amid signs the region is emerging from the effects of the global recession. The Brazilian processor of payments for Visa Inc., known as VisaNet, took in 8.4 billion reais ($4.3 billion) in its Sao Paulo offering in June. The Brazilian unit of Banco Santander SA, Spain’s largest bank, announced yesterday plans to sell as much as $200 million of stock in an IPO.

In Chile, casino operator Enjoy SA had the nation’s first IPO since November on July 8. Chile may have two more initial share sales this year, Jose Antonio Martinez, chief executive officer of the Santiago stock exchange, said in July.

“We’re going to see without a doubt some companies registering in the stock market” this year, Cordoba said. “But I can’t say if we’ll see an IPO process this year or next year.”

Foreign companies that trade in markets such as Canada, the U.S. and the U.K and have operations in Colombia are interested in listing existing shares in the country, Cordoba said.

“By yearend we expect at least one of those will have completed its listing in Colombia,” he said. “That possibly would be only a listing, not a share issue. But in the future one would hope that there’d also be local issues.”

Source: Bloomberg