Dubai-headquartered Shelf Drilling, owned by Australia's Champ Private Equity, is gearing up for listing on the London Stock Exchange in the next two months.

Shelf Drilling was formed 16 months ago by Champ to run $1 billion worth of shallow water oil rigs.

The Australian company said it plans to bypass the local share market to list on the London Stock Exchange in May.

"We're in the process of moving for a listing of that business on the London Stock Exchange hopefully in mid-May," Nathaniel Childres, Champ managing director, told an Asian Venture Capital Journal conference on Friday.

Set up in 2012 to buy 38 shallow-water drilling rigs from New York and Zurich-listed oil driller Transocean, Shelf Drilling had already produced "a very, very strong financial return", remarked Childres.

He did not give a reason for pursuing a listing in the UK instead of Australia and did not say how much Shelf hoped to raise via an initial public offer.

The planned float comes as private equity firms look to capitalise on an improvement in the market for initial public offerings.

"The equity market's definitely very strong at the moment and that's definitely putting a window around IPOs," Pacific Equity Partners managing director Tony Duthie told the conference.-Reuters