Since Telecity, the data centre operator, was (re)floated in October 2007, the exit to the public markets has looked virtually inaccessible to private equity houses. Not that initial public offerings from other sources have been abundant. Investment banks and the firms themselves are desperate to tap into investors’ cash reserves. But private equity companies face a specific and additional obstacle compared with, say, entrepreneurs selling the companies they founded: debt.

Take New Look, which on Wednesday reported positive underlying growth in sales for its full year, and a 10 per cent rise in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. As the group pointed out, it faces no “material debt maturities” before 2013. It is also reasonably cash generative, despite natural caution about levels of consumer debt and unemployment. Retailers are not obvious candidates for flotation in the late stages of a recession, or early stages of a recovery. But if New Look’s owners, which include Permira and Apax, did bring the company back to the market, they would confront investors who are far warier than they were two or three years ago about the consequences of buying highly leveraged IPOs straight off the prospectus.