Milford Asset Management senior analyst William Curtayne said it was common enough for large floats to be conducted in two tranches.
Telstra did it in Australia and the Queensland state government sold off rail assets in two tranches to protect the price and ensure widespread Australian ownership of QR National.
Raising $3 billion in one go was ''enormous'' in terms of the existing NZX size. There were floats of that size in Australia but the market capitalisation there was about $1 trillion and it had the ability to absorb that amount of capital, Mr Curtayne said.
However, Green co-leader Russel Norman said that as shares in Mighty River Power hit a new low, the Government knew it could not sell 49% of Meridian Energy in one hit in the current climate.
''Unfortunately, rather than biting the bullet and calling a complete halt to its asset sales programme, it is pushing ahead with a foolish plan to sell Meridian Energy in chunks.
''The Mighty River Power sale was a mighty flop and the John Key Government knows that pushing ahead with another sale will result in even fewer shares going to `mum and dad' investors','' he said.
Mr Curtayne said while the Greens were pointing to Mighty River as a failure, there were still 113,000 retail investors who took up shares, including many New Zealanders who bought shares for the first time.
The Greens had done much to hurt demand because of the late announcement that the party, along with Labour, wanted to nationalise the electricity industry.
That uncertainty hurt demand and the price, he said.
The timing of the Mighty River Power float was not ideal as the market had reached a peak and started to come down in value.
''It's not positive. Ideally, we would have seen a 5% to 10% rally in the shares. The timing is not the best, with the market being 3% down.''
But the New Zealand share market had not been the only casualty in the past few days, with Australia also hit, Mr Curtayne said. Australian banks were down 15% in value, with Westpac down 18%.
Mighty River was trading yesterday unchanged at $2.36, down from its $2.50 listing price.
Mr Curtayne said overseas investors in Mighty River Power, who had not hedged the currency, were taking a hit on yields as the New Zealand dollar fell against the US currency. Some of those investors were selling out, pulling down the share price.
The Government had several options in floating Meridian, apart from selling 49% in two parts, including offering a more attractive bonus scheme than the one-for-25 offered in the Mighty River float, adjusting the pricing to give a better yield or offering a discount to retail investors.
''With the Meridian offer being 50% larger than the Mighty River Power offer, the Government will have to attract 170,000 retail investors to avoid selling a greater portion to domestic institutions and offshore investors.
"The performance of Mighty River Power over the next few months is likely to determine how the Meridian offer is structured.''
