The annual HLB Mann Judd IPO Watch, released yesterday, showed the number of initial public offerings in calendar year 2015 increased to 85 deals from 70 in 2014, amid greater diversity in industry sectors. And while the total funds raised in 2015 (A$7.02 billion) was down on 2014 (a record $16.7 billion), activity in 2015 was "more evenly balanced," according to this year's report. Marcus Ohm, a partner in the firm's Perth office and author of this year's report, said the leading sector for IPOs in Australia in 2015 was technology, making up 20 per cent of all listings and raising $1.56 billion or 22 per cent of 2015's total. This is up from 2014, when technology made up 16 per cent of listings and raised $0.46 billion. "In contrast, 2014 was dominated by healthcare and related companies, which raised $4.08 billion between them thanks largely to the Medicare Private and Healthscope listings," he said. In 2015, this sector raised just $250 million.Another trend Ohm pointed to was the evening out of the size of share floats. Seven entities with a market capitalisation of over $1 billion listed in 2014 compared to just two in 2015. At the other end of the market, there was only one successful listing of a firm with a market cap of less than $10 million. This sector has, in recent years, been heavily biased towards junior miners, a previous strength of the Perth adviser community. Ohm said that many existing listed mining companies were now being shadowed for backdoor listings, notably by emerging tech stocks. This was a turnaround from the decade following the bursting of the tech bubble in the early 2000s, when mining companies took over failed listed tech players. Ohm added that technology stocks look likely to continue their success story in 2016, with seven new technology companies in the process of listing, seeking almost $70 million between them. "As at the end of December 2015, a total of 20 companies had applied to list on the ASX in 2016, hoping to raise a total of $208 million, including biotechnology companies, a large dairy corporation, Bitcoin "miners" and workforce solution providers," Ohm said. Emerging financial services players, though, have been noticeably absent in the recent rounds of IPOs, Ohm and his colleagues conceded.