Y2K was still a major concern for Bay Street the last time quarterly stock sales were this bad.
The total value of new stock sales by Canadian companies from July through September fell 74 per cent to $1.8-billion from $6.8-billion year-over-year, according to data from LSEG Data & Analytics released Friday. That is the lowest total for any quarter since 1998.
The quarter also marked a historic low for the number of Canadian stock sales in a three-month period. Just 21 equity financing transactions were completed in the third quarter of 2024, the first time fewer than 29 deals were done during any quarter since the third quarter of 1998, when just 19 were completed.
“Our issuers are finding themselves hard-pressed to find a reason to raise equity,” Peter Miller, head of global equity capital markets at Bank of Montreal, said in an interview. “The more troubling part, as a Canadian, is they are not raising equity capital for new…
