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Bridgepoint Advisers, a UK-based buying group, is preparing to be listed on the London Stock Exchange, in a move that could value the company at around £ 2bn and mean a rare recent entry into public markets for a European private equity firm.
Bridgepoint, which was founded in 2000 after a acquisition by management of NatWest Equity Partners, seeks to sell about a quarter of its shares.
The float would see it join a small cafeteria of listed European buying groups, including Group 3i listed on the FTSE 100, the Swiss-based Partner Group, the French Eurazeo and the Swedish EQT, which on the list in 2019.
All four are trading at or near near all-time highs, as are US peers Blackstone, KKR, Carlyle and Apollo, as the industry ranks at cash record stack.
Bridgepoint has been on a “journey of growth and diversification,” its chief executive said William Jackson, who joined his predecessor in 1986 as a trainee student, said in a statement Tuesday.
“We expect this strong growth to continue in the short and long term as we continue to develop our existing strategies and further expand our platform.”
The IPO would come at a time when private capital recruitment has reached record levels in the UK, raising the profile of the industry and causing a reaction of some shareholders arguing that buying groups are taking advantage of the consequences of Brexit and the pandemic to take companies at a lower price.
William Jackson, managing partner of Bridgepoint © Charlie Bibby / FT
Bridgepoint is owned by 140 of its employees and Dyal Capital Partners, which has a 20% stake.
Under the proposals, which are at an early stage, all shareholders would sell equal proportions of their stake and would see their holdings diluted.
The private equity group expects to raise about £ 300 million for the issuance of new shares, along with sales from existing shareholders of part of its assets for about £ 200 million in total.
The additional funds could allow the purchasing group, which normally buys companies worth about 1.5 million euros, to inject more cash into its own funds, expand into areas such as real estate and infrastructure, and create new offices. In recent years it has opened operations in New York, San Francisco and Amsterdam.
Private markets are growing “as investors increase allocations to the asset class as a result of the search for yield in a low global interest rate environment,” Bridgepoint said in a statement.
Bridgepoint’s sale of a minority stake in Dyal in 2018 it allowed him to buy a rival buying group Credit arm of 3.9 billion euros from EQT Partners last year, expanding its role in corporate lending in the same way that the pandemic left companies in need of loans.
This agreement gave Dyal, a unit of money manager Neuberger Berman, access to a share of dividends and interest from Bridgepoint.
Bridgepoint is perhaps best known in the UK for its Ready to Eat Coffee and Sandwich Chain sold to the investment group JAB Holdings in 2018. It has also done so supported Dorna, which has international MotoGP rights.
The privately held company has assets under management of about 26 billion euros according to its website, including a flagship European buyout fund of 5.8 billion euros.
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