FRESH BLOW FOR LONDON AS US BUYERS MOUNT £5BN RAID ON STOCK MARKET
Two major British companies are poised to join the exodus from the London stock market after American rivals made multibillion-pound takeover offers for each.
On Monday, semiconductor company Alphawave recommended a $2.4bn (£1.8bn) sale to US chip giant Qualcomm while high-tech equipment maker Spectris urged shareholders to back a £4.4bn sale to private equity house Advent International.
The deals would mean both companies would cease to be listed in London, dealing a fresh blow to the City just days after Wise, the British financial technology champion, announced it was moving its main listing to New York.
Both takeovers will also see the American buyers pay substantially above the share prices that their British targets commanded beforehand, prompting suggestions they may have been undervalued by London investors.
Qualcomm’s offer is more than 90pc above Alphawave’s share price before talks began in April and the Spectris bid is 84pc higher than its stock price on Friday.
Charles Hall, head of research at Peel Hunt, said: “The bids for Spectris and Alphawave show how undervalued UK listed companies are given premiums of 85pc and 96pc respectively.”
“It continues the constant theme of companies leaving the market, with 30 takeovers of scale and just one initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange in 2025.”
“Urgent action is required if we want a healthy UK equity market that supports our listed companies and encourages the next generation of companies to list.”
Qualcomm said it was buying Alphawave to aid its expansion into data centres, which are becoming increasingly important in the race to develop artificial intelligence (AI) software.
Alphawave is a specialist in technologies that “drive faster, more reliable data transfer with higher performance and lower power consumption”, a joint statement by the companies said.
This means its products “form a part of the core infrastructure enabling next-generation services in a wide array of high growth applications, including data centres, AI, data networking and data storage”.
Silicon Valley giants such as OpenAI, Google and Amazon are racing to acquire more data centre capacity to help train their AI programmes.
Tony Pialis, the president and chief executive of Alphawave, said: “Together, we will unlock new opportunities for growth, drive innovation, and create a leading player in AI compute and connectivity solutions.
“For our shareholders, the Alphawave board is pleased that Qualcomm’s offer provides an opportunity to realise compelling value for their shares.”
Spectris, which is headquartered in London, makes various high tech instruments, including particle measuring systems used in the pharmaceutical industry.
2025-06-09T07:42:36Z