Bridgepoint mulls London listing

A source familiar with the situation confirmed to Unquote that the listing is expected to value the GP at £2bn.

Bridgepoint said in a statement that it expects to generate proceeds of around £300m from the issue of new ordinary shares as part of the IPO.

Founded in 1999, London-headquartered Bridgepoint invests in mid-market companies in Europe, managing four strategies: mid-market; lower-mid-cap; early-stage growth; and credit. The GP had €27.4m in assets under management as of 31 March 2021.

The same source familiar with the situation told Unquote that the IPO is also intended to assist with the GP's potential expansion in the US, as well as with the establishment of new private assets strategies in infrastructure and real estate.

The GP expects to begin fundraising for Bridgepoint Europe and Bridgepoint Growth in the near future, according to a statement. The GP held a final close for Bridgepoint Europe VI in December 2017 on €5.7bn. The fund's latest platform investment is Itsu; the GP acquired a minority stake in the east-Asia-inspired fast food chain earlier in June 2021, as reported.

Bridgepoint held a final close for the debut fund in its Growth strategy in May 2017 on £86m; the fund makes investments of £5-15m in UK-based consumer, media and technology businesses.

The GP is also currently on the road for vehicles in its Bridgepoint Credit Opportunities and Bridgepoint Direct Lending strategies, according to the same statement. The GP acquired EQT Credit in 2020, increasing its own private credit offering.

JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are acting as joint global coordinators, with JP Morgan as sole sponsor. BNP Paribas, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch will act as joint bookrunners if the offer proceeds. Moelis & Company is acting as financial adviser to Bridgepoint.

US-headquartered KKR and Blackstone are two of the most renowned private equity investors to have listed. Other publicly listed GPs include Brussels-headquartered Gimv, which makes PE investments via an evergreen fund, as well as UK-headquartered 3i. Some firms have a blended private and public model with a listed trust contributing to their firepower and co-investing in their deals as a separate fund, including Oakley Capital and Hg. EQT also listed 20% of its shares in Stockholm in September 2019.

Germany-headquartered small-cap technology investor Brockhaus Capital Management announced in July 2020 that it intended to list in Frankfurt, with the transformation into a stock corporation allowing the GP to raise capital for its evergreen fund structure via the public markets. Further examples of listed GPs in the DACH region also include Aurelius, which raised its first fund for institutional investors in April 2021, as well as Deutsche Beteiligungs AG (DBAG), which invests via funds and its balance sheet.

Listing on the public markets is not always a smooth ride for GPs, with stock pricing, control and a lack of understanding of the asset class on the public markets cited as potential challenges, as previously reported by Unquote in 2016.

To name one example, Electra Private Equity began to wind down its strategy in 2018, around two years after the election of activist investor Edward Bramson to its board following a dispute over the GP's strategy. The GP has two remaining portfolio companies: restaurant chain TGI Fridays and shoe retailer Hotter Shoes.

Private equity returns at fund level have long been acknowledged as outperforming public equities on a long-term basis, although the performance of GPs themselves as listed entities does not always match those of their unlisted peers, as shown in reports including McKinsey's Global Private Markets Review 2019. The report stated that, while global private equity NAV grew by 7.5x between 2002 and 2019, LPX data showed that the NAV of listed PE firms grew by only 3x over the same period.

In spite of the challenges, the flexibility of listed models when it comes to capital increases, as well as the expansion of strategies and geographies, are often named by GPs (including Bridgepoint) as part of their rationale for listing. Such listings also offer investors access to companies and value creation models that might not be available elsewhere in the public markets, allowing them to benefit from the strong performance of private equity models.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Send to  

• Topics
• GPs
• UK / Ireland
• IPO
• Bridgepoint
• United Kingdom