Few like to hear words like “softening” or “plateauing” but they’ve been thrown around today after Travelport axed its planned $1.8 billion IPO. A cautious eye is now being cast upon planned sales of travel firm Amadeus and retailer New Look.

Of the 62 IPOs launched globally since December 1, 2009, 32 were shelved — 15 in the U.S., 7 in Europe and 10 in Asia.

“The market remains open for good companies with good prospects that have a sensible raison d’etre for listing, but as a dumping ground for private equity? No, thank you,” says a UK fund manager.

More from the Web:

Amadeus To Review IPO Options After Travelport (Financial News)

Eyes Turn to New Look IPO After Travelport Blow (WSJ)

IPO Market Showing Signs Of Softening? (RTTNews)

A Gloomy Day for U.K. IPOs (WSJ)

Pity Those Poor IPO Bankers (WSJ)

Merlin puts £2bn flotation plans on hold (FT)

A Citigroup presentation on Thursday featured sterling examples of what information designer Edward Tufte calls “chartjunk”: charts that distract from or even conceal the data they are trying to illuminate.

Look at page 6 of the PDF, which is marked 5 on the page of the presentation itself: the bank’s assets have declined by what appears from the chart to be a dramatic amount. The 2007 bar is about 3 centimeters long, while the 2008 bar is roughly 1.8 centimeters long. That’s a 40 percent drop.

But the numbers, used to bolster a presentation to analysts by Citi CFO John Gerspach tell a different story: Citigroup’s assets fell from $2.19 trillion in 2007 to $1.94 trillion in 2008, which is a much-less-impressive 11 percent decline.

Other charts on the page have issues, too. For example, deposits rose about 8 percent from 2008 to 2009, but the 2009 bar is about 80 percent taller than the 2008 bar. The decline in deposits from 2007 is similarly off-scale, which would imply that the chart issues are more of an accident than a deliberate effort to misguide.

Citigroup spokesman Stephen Cohen said the company displayed the numbers.

If these were the worst mistakes Citigroup ever made, taxpayers would be much better off. But clearly, investors could do with a little less chartjunk from the third largest U.S. bank.

Ohio-based power company FirstEnergy aims to take over Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Energy in an all-stock deal worth $4.7 billion, but getting this deal done is going to be much harder than just flipping a switch.

With no less than 10 regulated utilities across seven states, a merger landscape littered with dead utility deals and a not-too-distant history of power problems, FirstEnergy’s target completion horizon of about a year may be a bit optimistic.

Allegheny’s shares rose 11 percent, far short of the premium of 32 percent that FirstEnergy offered, indicating investor skepticism that the deal will be completed. Recall the trouble this sector has seen getting deals done. FPL Group failed to merge with Constellation Energy, and Exelon and Public Service Enterprise Group saw their deal fall apart. Both were felled by regulatory clubs.

And residents of the Northeast and Midwest will remember the name FirstEnergy when recalling the transmission line failure that swept across the power grid and knocked out electricity across eight states and into Canada on Aug. 14, 2003. The company has also suffered several problems at its Davis-Besse nuclear reactor, including a water pump emergency in 1985 and a hole in a reactor pressure vessel head that forced the shutdown of the plant from 2002 to 2004.

Though analysts are saying that the target is not too expensive, the current climate for this particular merger may prove to be deadly.