Buyout group Bridgepoint plans to raise about 300 million pounds ($416 million) by listing on the London Stock Exchange, adding a rare private equity stock to the market amid a global rush of initial public offerings.
At least a quarter of the U.K. company’s shares will be publicly traded after the IPO, which will also see existing investors sell stock, Bridgepoint said in a statement Tuesday. The offering is expected to value the firm at around 2 billion pounds.
Bridgepoint, which focuses on middle-market investment opportunities, has more than 27 billion euros of assets under management. The company last week took a minority stake in Itsu, the Asia-inspired food company, and in May teamed up with Astorg to buy Irish financial software company Fenergo. It sold a business called Calypso to Thoma Bravo for about $3.7 billion in March, one of the biggest software deals in Europe this year.
Buyout firms have splurged $17 billion on takeovers of publicly traded British targets so far in 2021, the busiest start to a year since 2007. The deals mark a catch-up after some large global private equity funds avoided the U.K. in recent years. The country has endured some of the harshest Covid lockdowns, while dealing with supply chain and trade flow fears sparked by uncertainties about how Brexit would impact the country’s economy.
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The firm is also well known in the U.K. as an investor in Pret A Manager, a chain of sandwich shops. It sold that stake in 2018 to JAB, another investment firm.
Bridgepoint said that its Europe, Development Capital and Credit Opportunities funds raised since 2008 have posted above-average performance.
The listing comes less than two years after EQT AB, the largest buyout firm in the Nordic region, made its trading debut in Stockholm. The stock has soared more than four-fold since then. Besides EQT, other listed peers in Europe include France’s Eurazeo SE and Switzerland’s Partners Group Holding AG.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley are joint global coordinators of the offering, with BNP Paribas SA, Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. as joint bookrunners. Moelis & Co. is financial adviser to Bridgepoint.
Bridgepoint said total operating income rose to 191.8 million pounds in the financial year 2020 from 144.8 million pounds in 2018. “Significant further profitable growth” has been achieved in the first quarter of 2021, it said.