Leonard Tannenbaum will wait to join the billionaires club. His Fifth Street Asset Management, a Greenwich, Conn.-based alternative asset manager with $5.6 billion under management, opted to withdraw its initial public offering on Wednesday. The decision was based on “continued volatility for new issuers in the equity markets,” according to a company press release.
"While we received demand from potential investors, market conditions are not optimal for an IPO at this time," Tannenbaum stated in the release. "We remain excited about the future and look forward to executing on our current initiatives to continue growing the Fifth Street platform."
The IPO was expected to raise as much as $208 million through the offering of 8 million shares of Class A common stock, priced between $24 and $26. If the company debuted at the high end of that range, Tannenbaum’s stake –38.36 million shares of Class B stock -- would be just shy of $1 billion. Tannenbaum did not plan to sell any shares in the IPO, according to an S-1 filed with the SEC.
Fifth Street assets under management are mainly spread across two publicly-traded business development companies (BDCs), Fifth Street Finance Corp. and Fifth Street Senior Floating Rate Corp. The companies provide financing to small- and mid-sized businesses with annual revenues between $25 million and $500 million.
Previously an analyst at Merrill Lynch, Tannenbaum, 43, founded Fifth Street in 1998. He remains its chief executive. Tannenbaum led the company’s move from White Plains, N.Y. to its current Greenwich headquarters earlier this year. He owns the space and collects $2 million in rent annually, according to the S-1.
