Planned initial public offerings worth more than $21bn have been pulled from the global market in the first two months of the year, a figure almost double the amount raised through successful flotations, new data will show on Thursday.

The value of cancelled or postponed deals, the highest on record for the first two months of any year according to data tracked by Thomson Financial, underlines the degree to which the credit market turmoil is hurting investor appetite in the once-buoyant equity capital markets.