London-listed retail investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown has become the latest UK company to delist after accepting a £5.4 billion (around $6.9 billion) take-private deal.
The consortium— which includes CVC Capital Partners, Nordic Capital and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority—will pay £11.40 per share, representing a 54.1% premium to the last close before the group’s initial offer.
The total value of UK PE-backed take-privates already reached £13.6 billion in the first half of this year, exceeding last year’s £11.1 billion total.
However, there have been fewer deals, with only nine deals recorded in the first half of the year
According to PitchBook’s Q2 2024 European PE Breakdown, UK-listed assets continued to attract PE sponsors given the discount they carry.
This is partly due to the structural issues with the London Stock Exchange that have made it less attractive to new listings. The FCA has since simplified the listing rules to create a new single category of shares which allows a dual-class share structure.
The Hargreaves Lansdown take-private is the third-largest in the past decade. The two largest were SoftBank Group’s £24.3 billion acquisition of chipmaker ARM in 2016, and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice’s £7 billion deal for supermarket group WM Morrison in 2021.
Nicolas Moura, EMEA private capital analyst at PitchBook, notes that as deal value picks up, the market is also slowly tilting towards being a seller’s market. Hargreaves Lansdown rejected the consortium three times since first being approached in April.
He added: “The rise in interest rates has also contributed to an increase in club deals, where sponsors collaborate on large megadeals.”
The Hargreaves Lansdown deal is partly financed by a £1.75 billion loan provided by Apollo and KKR.
An exterior view of Hargreaves Lansdown building.
Featuredimage by SOPA Images/LightRocket
