Has Jack Ma made IPOs a weapon of corporate warfare? October 29, 2020 Ant Group is not a household name. An affiliate of Chinese tech wizard Jack Ma’s Alibaba, it operates the digital payment platform Alipay, which serves more than a billion users and is China’s largest such enterprise. This week, Ant Group announced the pricing of its listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Shanghai’s Star [...]
Snakes and Ladders: Who is moving jobs in the City this week? October 28, 2020 Snakes and Ladders provides a roundup of the most important hires and job moves across the City, every Wednesday afternoon. Email citymoves@cityam.com to be featured. City firms are continuing to adapt to the challenges and opportunities presented by the pandemic as they vie to be in prime position to recover from the economic fallout of the crisis. This [...]
UK betting firm Genius Sports to go public with $1.5bn US deal October 27, 2020 UK sports data firm Genius Sports Group is planning to go public with a listing on the New York Stock Exchange by merging with special purpose acquisition company Dmy Technology. The deal values the combined group at around $1.5bn. Genius Sports boss Mark Locke will stay on as chief executive following the transaction. Dmy chairman [...]
Where is the Institutional Money? October 22, 2020 For over a decade now, we have seen the growth and development of digital assets. Some have been highly successful in terms of increasing their value and use (for example Bitcoin and Ethereum) whilst many have been less successful. What is clear is the lack of institutional capital, compared to other tradable assets, that has [...]
Music royalties firm Round Hill plots London listing October 13, 2020 Music royalties firm Round Hill today said it is planning to raise $375m (£288m) through a listing on the London Stock Exchange. Guernsey-based Round Hill Music Royalty Fund said it was targeting annual returns of between nine and 11 per cent through its investment in music intellectual property. Founded in 2010, Round Hill is an [...]
Bitcoin in context: the quantum leap October 8, 2020 Once again, bitcoin is on the precipice of another major directional move, which would dictate its end of year trajectory as we head deeper in the final quarter of a tumultuous 2020. Indeed, barely a week into October and the influx of headlines has everyone glued to their screens again; so much so that I [...]
Playboy set for Wall Street listing as iconic publisher looks to float October 1, 2020 The company, founded by Hugh Hefner in 1953 and forever synonymous with nude female centrefolds, said today it will merge with SPAC Mountain Crest Acquisition in a deal that values Playboy at $415m (£323m). Hugh Hefner’s company has in recent years moved into selling clothes, consumer accessories, gaming and promoting “sexual wellness”. It stopped printing [...]
Burford Capital gets green light for dual listing in New York September 14, 2020 Aim-listed Burford Capital has received approval from the New York Stock Exchange for a dual listing of its shares. The litigation funder, which listed on London’s Aim exchange in 2009, said it had received approval “subject to customary listing condition”. Burford Capital announced plans to list in the US in July shortly after a renewed [...]
Obituary: Former IoD chair Lady Barbara Judge September 1, 2020 Lady Barbara Judge, who has died aged 73 from pancreatic cancer, was a trailblazer in a varied career which spanned law, banking, regulation, media and the nuclear industry. An outspoken advocate for the accession of women in the workplace, she broke barriers becoming the first female director at Rupert Murdoch’s media giant News International and [...]
Technically Speaking August 18, 2020 August 1st 2012, as the trading day begins on the New York Stock Exchange, Knight Capital, the largest trader in US equities at the time, goes on a buying spree: within 45 minutes the firm buys 150 different stocks for 7 billion US dollars. There were no special circumstances to suggest such optimism – besides, [...]