Credit Suisse expects Swiss IPO market to rebound in 2016

By Joshua Franklin

ZURICH (Reuters) - Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX) expects the market for initial public offerings in Switzerland to rebound next following an unexpectedly slow 2015, the Swiss lender's head of domestic investment banking said on Tuesday.

After an IPO-heavy 2014, jitters over emerging markets as well as private equity groups having fewer firms left to list dampened demand for IPOs in Europe this year.

Cosmo Pharmaceuticals' (COPN.S) subsidiary Cassiopea (SKIN.S) and telecoms firm Sunrise (SRCG.S) have been the only IPOs in the Swiss market so far this year.

"It's been a bit lighter than we expected this year in terms of IPOs, unlike next year," Credit Suisse's head of investment banking for Switzerland, Marco Illy, said at a media event. "Next year we expect a total of four or five IPOs."

Illy said the recovery in 2016 would be in part due to market listings that had been held up this year. He added that cooling U.S. demand for biotech IPOs put firms in this sector among the prime candidates for Swiss stock market flotations.

Credit Suisse also expects to see more instances of shareholder activism at European companies, especially in Switzerland, where a 2013 referendum has given shareholders a greater say over corporate governance.

Cevian's taking a stake in Swiss engineering group ABB (ABBN.VX) is among the most high-profile cases of activist investors in the Swiss market.

"Activists see less value gaps in the U.S.," Illy said, "and therefore migrate to the European market where there is, if you want, still a fair degree of undervaluation."

(Reporting by Joshua Franklin, editing by David Evans)