Semiconductor firm Alphawave prices London IPO at up to £3.2bn May 6, 2021 Canadian firm Alphawave has set a price range for its planned London float putting it on track for a valuation of up to £3.2bn. The company is just four years old and develops technology that pushes data through data centres and phone networks. It indicated plans to list in the capital last month and now [...]
Does an emissions scandal await the real estate sector? May 6, 2021 | City Talk In September 2015, news broke that Volkswagen (VW) had been selling cars in the US that had a so-called “defeat device” installed in diesel engines. It could detect when they were being tested and change performance to improve results. The German carmaker admitted to cheating emissions tests and it soon became clear that this was [...]
FTSE ends day with slump as Wall Street’s Nasdaq plunges nearly three per cent May 4, 2021 The FTSE 100 slipped back below the 7,000 point mark by the market close, despite a strong start to the week’s trading after the Bank Holiday weekend. The blue-chip FTSE 100 index fell 0.67 per cent by the end of the day, with banking stocks, including HSBC Holdings, Barclays and Standard Chartered posing the biggest drag on [...]
Joachim Klement, CFA: Three Geo-Economics trends to watch May 4, 2021 | City Talk “Today’s investors need to understand geopolitical trends as a main driving force of markets.” Joachim Klement, CFA Joachim Klement, CFA, has emerged over the last decade as one of the more insightful and compelling voices in finance. Well-reasoned, rigorous, humorous, and occasionally iconoclastic, his perspective, featured either on the Enterprising Investor Blog or on his [...]
Oxford Nanopore raises £195m ahead of London listing May 4, 2021 Oxford Nanopore has raised £195m in fresh funding ahead of its planned IPO in London later this year, it said this morning. The company has helped to track coronavirus mutations in the past year, which has made it somewhat of a darling of UK genetics work. The Oxfordshire-based scale-up said £125m of investment came from [...]
London IPO: Darktrace shares surge 40 per cent on market debut April 30, 2021 Shares in UK tech darling Darktrace soared on their London debut, jumping as much as 42 per cent higher than their initial listing price, in an IPO that valued the company at £1.7bn. Darktrace this morning said shares were priced at 250p in its London IPO, the midpoint of the range. Upon the opening bell shares traded [...]
City PM TV: Daily Market Snapshot April 30, 2021 Its been a fascinating month for global equity markets in April. Three key themes have dominated: i) a weak US dollar (and strong currencies elsewhere); ii) a strong US company reporting season (with that replicated in other parts of the globe); & iii) a Fed meeting and a reiteration, once again, of the Fed’s super [...]
City regulator proposes easing suspension rule for listed SPACs April 30, 2021 The financial watchdog is consulting on a raft of changes to UK SPAC listings, including the rules around SPAC trading suspension when the vehicle identifies an acquisition target. Following a surge of SPAC or “blank check” company listings on Wall Street and more recently in Europe, London is keen not to be left behind. The Financial Conduct [...]
Funds under management swell to a record £135bn at St James’s Place April 29, 2021 Funds under management at St James’s Place have reached a record high and strong inflows in the first quarter it said this morning, as government spending and Covvid-19 vaccination drives positive investor sentiment. Funds under management jumped to £135bn at the end of March, surpassing the previous record of £129bn it touched in 2020. Net [...]
Funds are failing to deliver top-quartile returns April 29, 2021 The funds industry is failing to deliver top-quartile returns with the average falling to a historic low in the first quarter, according to new research. Just 1.8 per cent of funds consistently achieved top quarterline performance over the past three years, according to BMO’s latest FundWatch survey. BMO analysed 1,085 funds with a three-year track [...]