London IPOs surge in third quarter Flotations on both the main market and the junior Aim market raised £601m in the last quarter, up from £214m in the same period a year earlier, EY, the accountancy firm formerly known as Ernst & Young, said. That brings the total amount generated from IPOs so far in 2013 to more than £3bn, twice what was raised during the whole of last year. Businesses floating on Aim raised £211m, from 15 IPOs, EY said. The debut of London-focused estate agency Foxtons last month, which raised £390m, was the only main market flotation. With the highly-anticipated Royal Mail IPO due to complete next week, the market for new listings is expected to remain buoyant. "There are extremely encouraging signs about the next quarter and indeed the first half of 2014," said David Vaughan of EY. There is a strong pipeline of good quality businesses preparing to IPO over the next nine months. In the next few weeks we will see Royal Mail come to the market and only this week we have seen Stock Spirits Group announce their intention to float. We expect to see an number of other large private equity backed businesses make announcements over the next few weeks. Separately, Gala Coral was yesterday reportedly preparing the ground for a listing of its online and betting businesses for more than £2bn. Ahead of that flotation, the company was said to have received approaches for its bingo division, which is valued at as much as £300m. A Gala spokesman did not comment on the report.