Strategy
UK's Metro Bank Plans To Sell Shares To Current Investors Ahead Of IPO - Media
A report says the UK lender is pushing forward with capital-raising plans ahead of its scheduled IPO next year.
The UK’s Metro Bank, which operates in areas including wealth management, plans to sell shares to existing investors before holding an IPO next year, Bloomberg reported, citing an unnamed source.
The bank, launched in 2010 and one of the new lenders to attempt to break into a field dominated by the likes of Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays, has enough interest from shareholders to raise about £400 million (around $600 million) through a private placement of stock, the news service quoted the person as saying. The final amount will depend on market conditions, the source said. The bank reportedly declined to comment.
The bank's chairman, Vernon Hill, is seeking for Metro Bank to beat the growth of Commerce Bancorp, the New Jersey-based firm he started with one outlet in 1973 that was sold to Toronto-Dominion Bank 34 years later for $8.5 billion. The news service said Metro Bank has hired Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Royal Bank of Canada to handle a share sale next year.
The report added that most potential stock buyers are in the US, where Hill has garnered support for the lender from investors who backed Commerce Bank.
In September, Metro Bank appointed commercial banking director Julie Barnsley to lead its private banking business, which now accounts for around a fifth of the bank’s operations. Barnsley replaced Kirsty MacArthur, taking on the role to meet a "boom in demand" from the bank's high net worth clients, it said. Metro Bank Private Banking covers specialist sectors including sports and entertainment, entrepreneurs, boards and partners, and commercial private clients.
In its recent results statement, the bank revealed it had boosted its total assets to £4.57 billion ($7.05 billion) over the second quarter of this year, an increase of 8 per cent from the first quarter and 62 per cent from the previous year.
When Metro Bank was founded, it became the first new high street bank in the UK for over 100 years.
