The leading Romanian cable television company and Turkey's DTH operator have dropped plans to list on the London Stock Exchange, becoming the latest big casualties of the credit squeeze.

RCS & RDS, the Romanian media and telecommunications group, blamed “current market conditions”, while Digiturk of Turkey said it preferred to invest in its own business and not sell shares at a price it felt was too low.

The Romanian company had hoped to raise between $390 million (E266m) and $540 million for 15 per cent of the company through the issue of global depositary receipts priced at between $5.25 and $7.25 per GDR. This would have given RCS & RDS a market value of about $3.5 billion. It wanted to use proceeds to fund expansion into the third-generation mobile telephone market and into central and eastern Europe.

The company has more than 1.2 million cable TV subscribers in Romania and also offers satellite TV, fixed-line telephony and broadband internet to customers in countries such as Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. RCS & RDS has about 70 per cent of the Romanian cable broadband market, according to Pyramid Research.

Digiturk, looking to raise up to $550 million was expected to be the largest Turkish flotation this year. It is controlled by Cukurova Group, a Turkish conglomerate, and Providence Equity Partners, a private equity group.

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