More than 50 initial public offerings worth a combined $4.7bn (€5.14bn) have been pulled since the beginning of this year, as the new issue market across the Atlantic grinds to a virtual halt.

The withdrawal at the end of last week of planned IPOs by Motive Communications, an internet software company, and OMM, an optical networking company, has taken the combined total of IPOs which have been pulled in the US this year to 51.