Oman's Renaissance Services has revived plans to list its oilfield services business Topaz, more than three years after pulling a share sale in London, sources said on Thursday.

Dubai-based Topaz Energy and Marine, one of the biggest oil services companies in the Middle East, dropped its $500 million London listing plans in March 2011, citing market volatility as the reason.

The sources said Renaissance was now looking to push ahead with listing Topaz again having restructured the business.

"Topaz is doing well now ... they are looking at the London listing again. The management feels this may be the right time to get back into it," said one company source.

Banks were approached earlier this year with renewed plans for the London listing and lawyers were also consulted, the sources said. But no bank has been appointed yet.

Topaz declined to comment.

Topaz had launched its up-to-$500 million share sale in 2011 with a price range of 170-230 pence per share, implying a market value of $1.5-$1.9 billion for the Dubai-based company.

But the listing was pulled over concerns that regional instability amid the Arab Spring uprisings might affect stock valuations.

Since Topaz's last attempt, the performance of global oil services firms has worsened, raising questions about the timing of the listing.

After a decade of double-digit growth, oil companies are now saving cash for dividends as stagnating oil prices and cost increases on big projects worldwide have squeezed margins.

This has hit oil industry services firms, who have been among the worst performing stocks this year.
In Europe, energy equipment and services stocks are down 8.3 percent in the year-to-date, with the MSCI European & Middle East energy equipment and services index trading at a 15 percent discount to the broader MSCI index, according to Thomson Reuters data.

However, Topaz has a relatively new fleet of 100 offshore support vessels and its operations are focused on the relatively profitable Middle East and Caspian Sea regions.

Shares in Gulf Marine Service, another UAE oil services firm operating in the region, closed trading at 154.75 pence on Thursday, a rise of 19 per cent since making their London market debut in March, but still below their end-April peak of 163 pence.

STAKE SALE

Two sources close to Topaz said any share sale was still at least 12 months away, however, as the company's chief financial officer, Pernille Fabricius, left the firm in May and the process of preparing for a listing would begin again once a successor was in place.

Nevertheless Topaz completed the sale of a 9.8 percent stake to Standard Chartered Private Equity last month for $75 million.

Analysts at investment bank EFG Hermes said in note published last month that the stake sale would lead to a public issue (listing) in an international market.

"The equity investment from a leading PE firm should help improve investor confidence in its public issue," the note said.

The business also successfully raised $350 million from a debut bond issue last October to fund capital expenditure.

A number of companies from the United Arab Emirates chose to float on the London market because of low liquidity in local stock markets after the financial crisis.

But business has since picked up in local markets with the Dubai market's General Index up by nearly 50 per cent so far this year after more than doubling in 2013. - Reuters