A record number of initial public offerings have been withdrawn or cancelled this month as sellers and investment banks struggle to keep the new issue market open. The companies that were preparing to list have been hit by falls in global equity markets and a sharp increase in volatility in the last four weeks.

Nineteen IPOs worth $9.8bn (€7.8bn) have been pulled globally in June, nearly twice the amount withdrawn in the previous worst month of January 2003, according to analysis by Financial News and Bloomberg.