Retail investor platform PrimaryBid in talks about sale

PrimaryBid, the fintech which had aspirations of becoming a member of the ranks of British unicorns, is exploring a sale after receiving expressions of curiosity from potential patrons.

Sky Information has learnt that PrimaryBid, which counts London Inventory Change Group and the SoftBank Imaginative and prescient Fund amongst its buyers, is working with advisers to area curiosity in a takeover.

Metropolis sources mentioned the method was being performed on an accelerated foundation and that if concluded, it could be at a steep low cost to the $500m valuation which it attracted three years in the past.

PrimaryBid was based with a easy however compelling imaginative and prescient to assist bizarre buyers gatecrash the closed Metropolis ranks of company fundraisings and flotations by aggregating demand from retail shareholders right into a single, enlarged order.

That mission to democratise entry to public markets gained assist from politicians and market members.

It made important progress in direction of this purpose in the course of the pandemic, notably securing a slice of a £2bn share sale introduced by Compass Group, the FTSE 100 contract caterer.

Since then, it has labored on a whole lot of offers and helped elevate roughly $2bn in fairness for listed firms.

Nonetheless, it has been hit by a extreme slowdown in fairness capital markets exercise, prompting it to launch a strategic evaluate and rent US-based market infrastructure specialist Rosenblatt Securities to judge its strategic choices.

Sources mentioned on Friday that it had acquired quite a lot of expressions of curiosity a couple of deal from monetary establishments and different buyers.

PrimaryBid has been going through into the weakest IPO market in years, which it has been making an attempt to mitigate by putting partnerships with the likes of US fintech group SoFi, in addition to European teams.

It has now reshaped its UK operations and stepped again from regulated actions, having for a number of months explored a cope with LSEG, one in every of its largest shareholders, to license its retail capital-raising expertise.

For a while, the corporate was chaired by Sir Donald Brydon, the veteran businessman who additionally used to chair the inventory change’s father or mother firm.

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Monetary Information, the commerce publication, reported on Friday that LSEG had written down the worth of its 7.2% stake in PrimaryBid by 87%, implying that the enterprise now had a valuation of simply £56m.

Based in 2016, PrimaryBid has raised roughly $250m throughout its 9 years in existence.

The corporate declined to touch upon Friday.