Wednesday, February 15, 2023 5:00 am
The head of digital lender Atom Bank has publicly championed London as the location for an eventual IPO, a boon for the city as it seeks to attract more tech listings.
The IPO of Durham-based Atom, which was linked to a New York listing last year, has been the subject of speculation on the Square Mile as policymakers try to persuade more domestic tech companies to come to the market .
Atom has pushed back plans for an IPO until 2024 or 2025 due to market volatility, but in an interview with City AM, due to be published tomorrow, CEO Mark Mullen has given his clearest support yet that London will be the firm’s home when she goes public.
“Our focus is to get the bank in a position where we can list and our assumption, our plan, is to do that in the UK, in London,” Mullen said.
He added that “there need not be any ambiguity” about the company’s “default assumption” that it will be floating in the capital.
“The only plan we ever made ourselves would be based on the London listing,” he said.
The comments mark the clearest support for a London listing for the company and put a clear distance between reported plans to list the company in New York, where a merger with a publicly traded acquisition vehicle was reportedly being considered last year. Tech companies are typically expected to fetch higher valuations from a larger pool of potential investors in the New York markets.
However, Mullen admitted that the matter is not “resolved” and that the company has investors who “sometimes come knocking on the door with other ideas.”
Atom has been open in its ambition to go public, saying a £30m funding round in November that valued the company at £460m would help fuel its IPO ambitions. The company, which introduced a four-day workweek for employees last year, told City AM it is optimistic it will report its first full year of operating profits in March after three consecutive quarters of profitability has.
A London listing for Atom would be a major coup for the city as it struggles with New York to attract more tech companies.
Treasury and City regulators have sought to overhaul licensing rules to make London a more attractive place for tech companies, with the government-commissioned Hill Review and Austin Review, among others, proposing a range of measures aimed at boosting growth companies are cheap.
The Financial Conduct Authority also released a paper in May last year detailing plans to reshape listing rules to “attract more high-quality growth companies and provide greater opportunities for investors.”
The government has also lobbied efforts to attract more tech listings in London. Both Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have backed efforts to get Cambridge-based chipmaker Arm for a London listing after its owner, Japanese investment giant Softbank, said it favors the Nasdaq in New York as a natural home for the company .
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