PRIVATE EQUITY GIANT TRIUMPHS IN £2.7BN BIDDING WAR FOR LONDON-LISTED FUND
A Jersey investment group is set to quit the London Stock Exchange after reaching a £2.7bn deal to sell itself to private equity.
JTC, which provides back-office services for private equity firms and other investors, will leave the FTSE 250 index after agreeing to a takeover by Permira, the British private equity house.
Permira, which controls over €80bn (£70bn) worth of assets, won a bidding war against New York firm Warburg Pincus, ultimately agreeing to purchase all JTC shares at a price of £13.4 each. The private equity firm values JTC at £2.7bn.
JTC’s takeover comes just seven years after it first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2018 and is likely to revive concerns about the shrinking of the market.
Investments platform Hargreaves Lansdown, cybersecurity firm Darktrace and software company Keywords Studios have all left the London Stock Exchange in recent years following private equity buyouts. Private equity firms are circling given low valuations on the London Stock Exchange.
Nigel Le Quesne, chief executive of JTC, said the company’s years on the stock market “have been a period of transformative growth, welcoming new colleagues and significantly expanding both our service offering and global reach”.
However, he said the deal to take the company private would give it “access to the knowledge, expertise and financial firepower to fully capture the exciting growth opportunities we see for the business, including further M&A and operational transformation through investment in AI”.
JTC was started in Jersey in 1987 and now has 38 offices in locations including Switzerland, Hong Kong and the Cayman Islands.
Investors have shown growing interest in fund administrators like JTC as they seek to profit on the rapid expansion of the private equity and private credit industries.
Permira and Warburg Pincus had both submitted a series of unsolicited bids in recent months, causing shares in the Jersey firm to increase by over 50pc.
The winning offer represents a 49.4pc premium to JTC’s share price on Aug 13, immediately before the initial private equity offer was made.
Permira owns stakes some of Europe’s most well-known firms including Klarna and Dr Martens. It also owns a selection of leading professional services firms including Evelyn Partners and Kroll.
Robin Bell-Jones, a partner at Permira, said: “We are well placed to help JTC unlock its full potential.”
The private equity firm, which was spun out of Schroders in 1996, is receiving backing from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to complete the deal.
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