Only 5 months away from the anticipated night race in the lion city, it is hard not to wonder what it would be like when the Formula One (F1) IPO materialises. The IPO would be the second largest equity fund raising in Singapore since the US$5.5 billion offering of Hutchison Port Holdings Trust last year.

So far, we’ve seen two IPOs this year, where both staged astounding double digit percentage gains from their IPO price barely 15 minutes into the market open. The first one is Cordlife Group, cord blood and tissue banking service provider, which rose a whopping 37.4 percent, where the second one was Bumitama Agri, Indonesian palm oil producer, as it opened 34.9 percent over its IPO price. You can read more about Bumitama Agri here.

Prior to the IPOs seen so far this year, uncertainty in the market due to the Eurozone debt crisis has put a dampener on some companies’ plan for listings. Manchester United, which was set to raise some US$1 billion and UK gym operator Fitness First, which was set to raise some US$500 million were among the notable names that were affected.

CVC Capital Partners (CVC), which owns 63 percent of SLEC Holdings, Holding company of F1 since 2006, is seeking pitches from banks to handle the possible IPO in Singapore. The banks have been asked to submit their pitches by the end of next week, where a decision will most likely be made pertaining to the undertaking of the IPO by the end of the month.

The IPO, which is likely to take place this year, is set to raise at least US$2 billion.

Although no absolute figures pertaining to the valuation of F1 has been confirmed, a report last month by Britain’s Sky News reported that an IPO would value the group at more than US$10 billion.