Cinven, the European private equity house, has sold its stake in IPC, the UK magazine publisher, for £1.15bn (€1.87bn), in a further sign of the potentially diminishing returns on highly leveraged buy-outs due to the slowdown in private equity markets.

Talks between Cinven and AOL Time Warner had collapsed after Cinven rejected offers between £850m and £1.1bn in June. Because of the market downturn, companies have abandoned initial public offerings in favour of trade sales, but even these are falling far short of last year's levels in terms of volume.