Aldermore IPO: Challenger bank plans to win round buyers for float
Challenger bank Aldermore plans to equal or even exceed its previous flotation plans when it comes back to the market to sell shares, its boss told City A.M. yesterday.
The lender had to pull its initial public offering (IPO) last month when market conditions suddenly turned against it.
But chief executive Phillip Monks said he believed investors were increasingly willing to back the bank.
“When we announced the intention to float, the fall in the FTSE was crazy – it was down to the German economy, China’s slowdown, Ebola, Isis… you can blame one or all of them,” Monks told City A.M.
“But we got very nice calls and email from investors saying they love it, asking us to come back soon.
“We are continuing to grow, and the bank will be even more established when we come back to the markets, with a bigger balance sheet and growing profitability.”
The bank said pre-tax profits in the third quarter came in close to the £18.6m made in the whole first half of the year. And that first-half profit was around the same level as profits across the whole of 2013, indicating the rapid level of profit growth.
Lending in the third quarter came in at £4.4bn, up from £4bn in the previous quarter.
And return on equity is “approaching 20 per cent”, up from 11.4 per cent in the first six months of 2014.