European Businesses Rushing To List In The US

Higher valuations have European businesses listing in the U.S. at a higher rate than has been seen in decades, Bloomberg reported.

On Holding, the Swiss sneaker brand, will list in New York, the company said Monday (Aug. 23), and cryptocurrency miner Argo Blockchain filed for a U.S. initial public offering (IPO) on Friday.

Meanwhile, U.K. FinTech firm Wise will also be selling American depository receipts.

There has already been $9.5 billion raised by New York companies via New York IPOs this year prior to the aforementioned companies’ announcements. That, according to the news outlet, was the most for this period since 2000.

Bloomberg writes that the attraction to U.S. IPOs comes from the ultra-high first-day pops and the willingness of Wall Street investors to spend large amounts on new stocks.

Those listings have become especially welcome with the drying-up of Chinese companies’ debuts, after a probe into Didi Chuxing as Beijing levied a wider crackdown. That has seen other firms pulling their planned offerings. And it has caused U.S.-listed Chinese stocks to plunge and put a damper on what has been a record year for IPOs from the country on Wall Street.

With the amount of trans-Atlantic listings, governments in Europe have been fighting to make the at-home IPOs more lucrative. Bloomberg writes that London has been looking into a series of rules friendly to tech companies. In Germany, meanwhile, there has been calls for an exchange for domestic startups.

Also read: Banking, Cloud Firms Lead IPO And SPAC Announcements

The bustling IPO field has seen an especially high amount of banking and high-tech cloud-related firms filing IPOs or going public with special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs). The PYMNTS IPO/SPAC tracker has seen 43 bank-related announcements this year so far and payments-related companies had 24, as of Aug. 5.

The activity included blank check company XPAC Acquisition, which went public with 20 million units offered at $10 per unit, and Alabama-based Southern States Bancshares, which announced it would look to raise $40 million in an IPO.